Strengthening Girls’ Agency around Secondary Education through Training, Advocacy and Policy Reforms.

This three-years project is implementing in District Vehari of Punjab in partnership with Malala fund Pakistan. The overall aim of the project is to enhance leadership and agency of girls around secondary education. Among its main objectives are:

• Girls to be trained as Girls Education Champions through Self-growth workshops and Leadership trainings
• Provide support to the girls from poor families by giving them bicycle 
• Raising awareness in society about importance of girl’s education 
• Develop connections with local government authority, school councils, teachers, parents & community to improve the school environment and to motivate girls for schooling

Self-growth program consists of 10 to 12 sessions spread over as many weeks. One session per week is being held as it provides the participants time to reflect, apply their learning and come back with their experiences, impressions and feedback. A session is usually 3 hours long. The trainer has the option to change the content as per the feedback received from the participants. She may add something or leave out. Similarly, the trainer and the participants can choose the order of the topics.

A group of girls’ education advocates at the district level has been formed with the purpose of advocacy with the government. These education advocates represent various departments and segments of society such as Education department, Social Welfare, Police, Health etc. Bedari is conducting the assessment of the missing facilities in the selected schools. This will be done through collecting information using primary and secondary source. The consultant will provide a comprehensive report with detailed analysis. Once conducted, the study will be widely disseminated among the Girls’ Education Advocates, decision makers and other stakeholders.  

Bedari has started distributing bicycles among deserving girls. This is being done systematically through a multi-stage process. The first stage is to create community groups of men and women who are prepared to help identify out-of-school females who are qualified to enroll in secondary education. The next phase is to create criteria for choosing the worthy girls for cycling. Poverty and motivation will be used as essential indicators in the criterion development process, which will be participatory. Motivating the families of the chosen girls to send their daughters to school is the next phase. Enrolling the girls in school and setting up the schedule to distribute bicycles is the fourth and last stage. A proper follow up with school management will be ensured to know about the performance of these girls.