Girls Education is Most Important

Building resilience can improve girls’ health and education faster and more effectively, but it’s a missing component of nearly all global development efforts to improve girls’ outcomes. 
 
For some time now, the global development community has known that investing in the health and education of marginalized girls creates a ripple effect. An educated girl is more likely to be healthy, find work, and reinvest her income in her family than a boy (90 percent of her future income vs. 35 percent for a boy). 

Girl First participants work together during resilience training at Jivrakhan Tola school in Bihar India. (Photo by Nivedita Singh)

Using internationally validated assessments, the RCT confirmed that resilience training not only had significant impact on girls’ emotional and physical well-being, but also amplified the impacts of our adolescent health-only curriculum. For instance, for girls involved in the program:

• Emotional resilience improved 33 percent
• Health knowledge increased 99 percent
• Attitudes about gender equality improved 18 percent
• Clean-water behaviors improved 96 percent.

See More at: http://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_missing_link_in_girls_education