Beyond Access — Reimagining What’s Possible for Girls
| This blog post is part of “20 Years, 20 Stories,” a series celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 60 million girls Foundation. Over the next eight months, we will share the stories of the people who have shaped our journey — volunteers, partners, donors, and the girls at the heart of our mission. We hope their voices inspire you as much as they inspire us. |
A Partnership Built to Last
Some partnerships are transactional. You fund a project, the project runs its course, and everyone moves on. The relationship between 60 million girls and CAUSE Canada has never worked that way.
Since 2011, the two organizations have been doing something harder and more rewarding than simply delivering programs: they have been learning together and daring to push the limits for girls.
The results, across four projects (2011, 2016 – 2017 2021 and 2023) speak for themselves.
Peer to peer, generation to generation
When 60 million girls and CAUSE Canada first joined forces, they were responding to two stubborn realities in Sierra Leone: the quality of education was poor, and girls faced significant barriers to accessing it at all.
The Peer Literacy Program put adolescent girls at the center — not as recipients of support, but as leaders. These young women, attending secondary school or university themselves, would tutor and mentor primary school children in their communities, four days a week, after school.
Photo credit: CAUSE Canada, 2011
Today, the program supports more than 100 adolescent girls each year, who in turn reach between 700 and 1,000 younger students. The numbers are impressive. But the real story is what happens to a girl when she is trusted with responsibility, given tools to succeed, and shown that her knowledge has value beyond the classroom.
The innovation that changed everything
In 2013, the partnership took another leap forward. CAUSE Canada and 60 million girls began piloting something new: a Mobile Learning Lab (MLL).
The first MLL brought offline access to Khan Academy content — downloaded onto USB keys — directly to children in the Peer Literacy Program. In communities where internet connectivity was nonexistent, classrooms overcrowded, and teacher training minimal, the Mobile Learning Lab offered a new and fun way to reach students.
Photo credit: CAUSE Canada, 2017
In 2016, the initial small-scale delivery of learning resources segued to a larger pilot project, which, in conjunction with advice from McGill University, included a randomized control trial to assess the impact of the Mobile Learning Lab.
The children, in grades 5 and 6, were drawn in by the engaging content. The impact was clear: literacy skills rose, and even more interestingly, non-cognitive skills like confidence and motivation increased in tandem. As children navigated this technology on their own, the new-found realization that they could do it, gave them a boost.
What started as a small pilot became proof of a principle: when you give children the right tools and the right support, they will do the rest.
Walking alongside, every step of the way
What makes this partnership distinctive isn’t any single program. It’s the consistency of the commitment.
As CAUSE Canada deepened its focus on adolescent girls in recent years, 60 million girls was there. When CAUSE Canada expanded its work with girls and women living with disabilities, 60 million girls supported that too. And when the harder, slower work of shifting community attitudes about girls’ education needed to happen, 60 million girls understood that this was just as important as building classrooms or buying equipment.
“From the beginning, our partnership with the 60 million girls Foundation made it possible to innovate, learn, and adapt—helping us identify key levers of change,” says CAUSE Canada.
From Mothers’ Clubs to a movement
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many girls around the world were at risk of never returning to school, 60 million girls’ support helped CAUSE Canada strengthen and expand its Mothers’ Clubs — community groups that became powerful platforms for leadership and sustained advocacy for girls’ education.
Those Mothers’ Clubs are now a cornerstone of EmpowerHER, CAUSE Canada’s seven-year initiative — funded in part by Global Affairs Canada — to end child marriage in Sierra Leone. The program reaches more than 480 communities across seven districts. It builds directly on the trust, the community structures, and the momentum that years of work funded by 60 million girls helped create.
The belief that started it all
The 60 million girls Foundation has always operated on a simple conviction: educate a girl, and she will change not just her own life, but the lives of everyone around her. The partnership with CAUSE Canada is fourteen years of evidence that the conviction is right.
To learn more about CAUSE Canada and its work in Sierra Leone, visit www.cause.ca. To read about how 60 million girls implemented the Mobile Learning Lab in Sierra Leone, visit Developing the MLL – 60 million girls.