Why Education?

Education touches every part of economic development and global stability.

• Research confirms that a single year of primary education creates a 10-20% increase in a woman's income later in life.
• Education also prevents sickness and disease: a young person with a secondary education is three times less likely to contract HIV Aids.
• Education results in better agriculture and improved nutrition.

Across many developing nations, particularly in rural societies, girls are not always educated and many have minimal understanding of their own rights. Education is crucial to ensuring a better quality of life for all children and a brighter future for all people. But if girls are left behind, those goals can never be achieved.

As Dr. J. E. Kwegyir Aggrey (Ghanaian Educator) puts it "The surest way to keep a people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family." It is true that in all nations, educating girls yields remarkable social capital and benefits for the current generation and those to come.

Educating girls is not just a women's issue, it is a development issue. Girl's educational empowerment is essential for economic development, growth, and poverty reduction not only because of the income it generates but also because it helps to break the vicious cycle of poverty.

Educating girls and women is critical to economic development. Research conducted in a variety of countries and regions has established that educating girls is one of the most cost-effective ways of advancing development

Greater investment in girls' education is vital for increasing female participation and productivity in the labor market, especially in non-agricultural wage employment. Greater productivity means higher economic growth and more effective reduction of poverty. Whether self-employed or earning wages, working women help their households escape poverty.

When women have more schooling, the returns flow not only to themselves but to the next generation as well. Indeed, studies have shown that giving women more access to education, markets (labor, land, credit), and new technology, as well as greater control over household resources, often translates into greater well-being for the household.