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Ms. Mercy Musomi, Executive Director of Girl Child Network (GCN) is on a mission to liberate and empower girls and women through education; building their skills and resilience for a better future. Having experienced the power of education herself, Ms. Musomi took the baton passed to her by her maternal grandmother who advocated and fought for the right to education of Kenyan children.

Girl Child Network of Kenya arethe 2020 winners of UNESCO Laureate Prize for Girls’ and Women Education for their project Our Right to Learn – Reaching the Unreached together with Shilpa Sayura Foundation of Sri Lanka. Girl Child Network was established in 1995 by 25 Kenyan Women Gender Advocates who attended the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. Since its establishment, GCN’s mission has been to protect and promote the rights of children, youth and women in Africa through advocacy, research, networking and enhancement of community participation.

UNESCO recognized GCN for providing participation and access to quality primary education for vulnerable children, out of school children, including girls prevented from accessing or completing primary education by harmful cultural practices and poverty. Phase one of the project has reached 51,936 children in 240 primary schools, including 25,937 girls, through education programmes, gender and disability-friendly school facilities, and community-based social mobilization, transforming negative attitudes standing in the way of girls’ education.

All Hands on Deck

“When you want to go fast, go alone; when you want to go further, go with others”. To educate a child requires the whole community, and it is this strong network and collaborations established by GCN through constant negotiation that is the main contributing factor for the success of phase one of the project. The target for phase one was to reach 37,500 out of school children. However, with the assistance of key community gatekeepers, community facilitators, head teachers, village tracking committees, and Our Right to Learn clubs, the GCN have managed to reach more out of school children. “Every school has a community facilitator, and every sixth school joins a group where village tracking committee work with them and the Right of Child (ROC) club to identify out of school children and work with them to ensure return and retention of the children in school,” said Ms. Musomi

Through constant sensitization and negotiation with the communities by convening community conversations and dialogues, children have been able to return to school. The project is empowering boys and girls with information on rights and life skills giving them confidence and aspiration to learn. Barriers associated with poverty, cultural practices such as female genital mutilation, child marriage, child labour, among others, have not been easy as most of the time when a child is taken back to school the parents tend to leave the responsibility of the learners and children to the community facilitators. This has been a constant challenge in learners’ retention in school experienced by community facilitators.

Most schools supported by GCN through the project are in the hard to reach areas with poor infrastructure and inadequate WASH facilities. Therefore, to reach the unreached, the project aims at enhancing the capacity of duty bearers with a view of training them on their duties and responsibilities. The training enables them to meet their legal obligations of enforcing implementation and monitoring of laws and policies that support enrollment and retention of out of schoolchildren and the protection of child rights. In addition, the project aims at engendering friendliness of the school learning environment to make it friendlier and gender sensitive and attractive for girls and boys to enroll and participate in education. Through rehabilitation of WASH facilities, training of teachers on leaner centered methodologies/pedagogy, training of School Boards of Managements on gender responsive school development planning, reduced gender based violence and stereotypes, schools would become more safe, secure and child friendly

UNESCO established the Prize for Girls’ and Women Education in 2015 with the generous funding from the Government of the People’s Republic of China. The prize is annually granted to two laureates and consists of an award of $50,000 to each winner to help further their work in advancing girls’ and women’s education. The prize contributes directly to the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda (SDG), in particular, Goal 4 on education and Goal 5 on gender equality. GCN’s win is timely as they are rolling out phase two of the project targeting to reach 47,515 Out of School Children and celebrating their Silver Jubilee since the establishment of the Network. “The prize is for community facilitator empowerment,” said Ms. Musomi.

Gender equality is a fundamental right. That is why 91�鶹������Ʒ���� made it its global priority