Secondary school graduation rates for girls in East Africa are dismally low but ASAP has created a model of holistic support to increase' graduation rates to 80% or higher! The Kupanda Project includes safe housing, academic & health support and leadership development and can be easily replicated. It is being implemented for 144 girls at a secondary school in rural Tanzania but the girls must have a science lab to pass their national exams. This lab will change the future for 144 girls!
2/3 of children in Tanzania are precluded from attending secondary school and girls are disproportionately affected. Conventional wisdom is that a dismal 5% of girls who begin secondary school actually graduate. Why? Many girls are victims of sexual assault, become pregnant and are forced to drop out of school. The ones who are lucky enough to attend most often receive a low quality secondary school education with almost no access to science or math facilities with useful teaching resources.
The Kupanda Project is a comprehensive model to boost access and retention rates for girls in secondary school. It is predicated on the idea that girls need more than one answer to the question: "What do you need to be successful in school?" Our solution is to systematically replicate the model (inc. science labs) in rural regions of Tanzania and East Africa to support girls to pursue their studies, offering them a chance at a quality secondary level education and healthy, more prosperous lives.
The long term benefits of quality secondary education for girls are indisputable. Girls who receive a secondary education will have higher family incomes, marry later, have fewer children and at an older age with lower infant mortality rates. Educated mothers immunize their children 50% more than mothers who are not educated. And, AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls with some education. The long-term benefits to a community with educated girls is immeasurable.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
