Inside Global Girls' Education

No one can escape the effects of climate change, but girls and women in many countries will experience especially harsh consequences due to existing gender-based inequities. Today’s episode features Christina Kwauk, an expert on girls’ education and education for climate action. Christina is a co-editor (with Radhika Iyengar) of Curriculum and Learning for Climate Action: Toward an SDG 4.7 Roadmap for Systems Change (forthcoming 2021) and co-author (with Gene Sperling and Rebecca Winthrop) of What Works in Girls’ Education: Evidence for the World’s Best Investment. She is also Research Director at Unbounded Associates, a Future Rising Visiting Scholar at Girl Rising, and a non-resident fellow in the Center for Universal Education at Brookings.

Additional Resources

• Three Platforms for Girls' Education in Climate Strategies
• A New Green Learning Agenda: Approaches to Quality Education for Climate Action
• Education International: New research: World fails in climate education despite urgent need to act.

Gender bias on its own can create unnecessary hurdles for girls. When girls also hold other identities that are demeaned or marginalized in society, however, even more significant barriers merge. Today’s episode focuses squarely on the intersection of race, gender, and girlhood by discussing what it means to be a Black girl in the United States. Our guest is Kalisha Dessources-Figures, Special Assistant to the President for Gender Policy, White House Gender Policy Council.

Resources
To read more about the White House Gender Policy Council: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2021/03/29/approaching-policy-with-equity-in-mind/

To learn more about intersectionality and the work of Kimberle Crenshaw, visit https://www.aapf.org/.

To learn more about school pushout, visit https://www.moniquewmorris.me/ and https://pushoutfilm.com/factsheet.

To learn more about adultification bias, visit: https://genderjusticeandopportunity.georgetown.edu/

Today’s guest is the 2020 winner of the Global Teacher Prize, Ranjitsinh Disale. Ranjit has taught at the Zilla Parishad Primary School in Paritewadi, Solapur, Maharashtra, India since 2009, where his leadership helped end teen marriages and saw his female students achieve 100% attendance from a low of 2%. Today, Ranjit shares how he did this and more.

Resources
https://www.globalteacherprize.org/winners/ranjitsinh-disale-2020/
https://teachforall.org/news/teach-all-talk-2020-global-teacher-prize-winner-ranjitsinh-disale

Warning: this episode contains language that refers to various forms of sexual assault and violence.

This episode discusses the roots of gender-based violence and its prevalence around the world with Sara Ferro Ribeiro, Senior Gender and Human Rights Advisor at the UN Migration Agency. We’ll then hone in on the situation in South Africa--home to one of the highest rates of gender-based violence globally--through a conversation with Teach The Nation Fellow Pearl Oriele Perumal.

Resources

https://teachthenation.org/

https://www.pearlitasofwisdom.com/

Resource Pack: Gender-Based Violence Support (South Africa)

National Domestic Violence Hotline: +1 800.799.7233

National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN): +1 800.656.4673

IG:@pearlitasofwisdom

Today’s episode features Mariana Sanz de Santamaria, educator and cofounder of Poderosas. Mariana talks with us about the costs of not speaking openly about sexual and reproductive health--particularly the beliefs, taboos, and behaviors that take root when clear and compassionate information is not shared in safe spaces.

Bio: Mariana Sanz de Santamaria is Colombian. She graduated as a lawyer but defines herself as an educator. She taught for two years in the Town of Barú, an island in the Colombian Caribbean, with Enseña por Colombia. She worked as an advisor of the Secretary of Education in Bogotá, her hometown, and is now the founder and director of PODEROSAS: a comprehensive sexual education foundation in high need communities in Colombia. She has been admitted to the Harvard Graduate School of Education to start a degree program as part of the Class of 2021.

Resources

For young people interested in engaging and accurate sexual health resources, Maria recommends visiting https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/teens.

Today’s episode features Dr. Urvashi Sahni in a discussion about how to change gendered mindsets by working with boys, girls, and families. She shares her story about coming into gender awareness after being raised in a patriarchal family, being married early, and then experiencing a devastating loss due to gender-based violence. Dr. Sahni runs the Study Hall Education Foundation (SHEF), which operates a network of six schools and four outreach programs in and around Lucknow, India. SHEF has trained over 100,000 teachers and impacted over 5 million children, primarily girls. The school uses a groundbreaking critical feminist pedagogy and an ethic of care to empower girls.

Resources:
Study Hall Educational Foundation: http://www.studyhallfoundation.org/
Boys’ Gender Curriculum: http://www.studyhallfoundation.org/downloads/What-about-our-boys-FINAL.pdf

A year ago, global lockdowns and school closures put 1.6 billion children out of school. Since then, a year of shutdowns, distance learning, and economic hardship has created exceptional challenges for getting all children, and especially girls, back on track. Today’s discussion focuses on the challenges girls faced during the first year of the pandemic, and features Susannah Hares, senior policy fellow and co-director of the Center for Global Development's global education program, as well as Temitope Ifegbesan, a Teach For Nigeria alumna and cofounder of the EmpowerHer Initiative.

Resources:

• Introducing the Girl's Education Policy Index | Center For Global Development
  
• COVID-19 and Girls' Education: What We Know So Far and What We Expect
  
• COVID-19 School Closures Put Girls at Unique Risk of Violence, Dropout, Survey of Education Organizations Finds
  
• What Do Past Shocks Tell Us About the Choices We’ll Face After the Pandemic? A Series on Education Finance Post-COVID
  
• Facebook: The EmpowerHer Initiative 
  
• Instagram: EmpowerHer Initiative (@empowerher_ng) 
  

Today’s guest is the CEO of the Malala Fund, Suzanne Ehlers, who will talk about global priorities in girls’ education, why this should matter to everyone, and what actors like the Malala Fund bring to this work. We’ll also discuss the progress towards equality that has been made over the past few decades, while examining the persistent challenges faced by girls and how those are increasing due to COVID.

The Malala Fund was founded in 2013 by Pakistani girls’ education advocates Malala and Ziauddin Yousafzai to ensure that all girls receive 12 years of “free, safe, quality education.” The Fund prioritizes three action areas: investing in local education activists, advocating to hold leaders accountable, and amplifying girls’ voices.

Teach For All is a global network of 59 independent, locally led and governed partner organizations and a global organization that works to accelerate the progress of the network. Each network partner recruits and develops promising future leaders to teach in their nations’ under-resourced schools and communities and, with this foundation, to work with others, inside and outside of education, to ensure all children are able to fulfill their potential.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachforall/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeachForAll

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teachforall/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teach-for-all/

RESOURCES

Malala Fund Website: https://malala.org

On Instagram, Suzanne follows and recommends: @feedthemalik, @_lyneezy, @f.moudouthe, @alokvmenon, @blairimani, @laylafsaad, and @stephanieyeboa

Books Suzanne is reading right now: Haben by Haben Girma, Malala book club picks on Literati, salt by Nayyirah Waheed, anything by Ocean Vuong and Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

Podcasts: Barack and The Boss on Renegades! All else can wait!

Sign up for Assembly, Malala Fund's digital newsletter: https://assembly.malala.org/subscribe

This series will address the reasons why girls’ education must remain a global priority, and why the fate of girls affects the fate of us all. Hosted by Samantha Williams, head of Teach For All’s Global Girls’ Education Initiative, the show will feature conversations with local leaders from across the Teach For All network, as well as global experts in gender and girls’ education. The series will cover topics such as patriarchy, sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, and more. The first episode airs on Monday, March 15th, featuring Suzanne Ehlers, CEO of the Malala Fund.