Millennium Development Goal 2 aims to Achieve Universal Primary Education and more specifically to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, girls and boys alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Access to education can have lasting effects toward eliminating poverty and promoting economic, political and social empowerment. While the Millennium Development Goals would be incomplete without addressing universal access to education, they simultaneously fail to address the quality or content of education as well as the social forces that keep children (and primarily girls) out of school.
MADRE works to make universal education a reality through a number of projects in Colombia, Sudan, and in other countries around the globe. In Kenya, MADRE is working with the Indigenous Information Network to support the Kilgoris Girls' School. The Kilgoris Girls' Secondary School is one of few schools that provide secondary education to girls in this rural region of Kenya. For families living in extreme poverty, girls are often married off at a young age in exchange for a dowry, seen as an important source of income. However, girls married at a young age are at a higher risk of maternal mortality, loss of basic freedoms and human rights, loss of mobility, and trauma caused by early sexual relations and miscarriages. They are also often subjected to the painful practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), since uncircumcised girls often bring in a lower dowry. By supporting the Kilgoris Girls' School, MADRE is not only helping girls to attend school, but we are also providing them with a safe space where they can grow and learn without the fear of a forced marriage.
For more information, read MADRE Talking Points on the Millennium Development Goals: Five Years Left.