Partnerships for Results

Our partnerships are everything

60 million girls has been investing in education projects since 2006 to help give a voice and a step up to those with fewer opportunities. We could not do this important work without our partners.

Sometimes our collaborations pay extra dividends, as in the case of our investment in a project with World University Service of Canada (WUSC). Our initial CAD $100,000 investment led to a £36.3 million (approx. CAD $61 million) contribution by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) from 2013 to 2022 towards Phase I and Phase II of the Kenya Equity in Education (KEEP) Project.

In 2008, we partnered with WUSC on the project, Increasing educational attainment for girls in refugee camps in Kenya, to reduce barriers to education for refugee girls in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps, while improving children’s literacy and numeracy skills.

Dadaab and Kakuma are currently home to over 262,700 refugees, and about half of all children in these camps are out of school – similar to the situation for refugees globally.

Refugees – especially girls – are out of school at higher rates

Around the world, UNHCR reports that there are 26.4 million refugees, plus 4.1 million asylum seekers and 5.4 million Venezuelans who have been forced to flee their homes and take refuge in another country.

Access to education for refugee children is much lower than for other children, with just 68% of primary-aged refugee children enrolled in school, compared with 79% of children in low-income countries, and 91% of children worldwide.

Further, refugee girls tend to be left out at a greater rate than boys. In primary school enrollment, 70% of refugee boys are enrolled, compared with 67% of girls. At the secondary level enrollment falls to 35% and 31%, respectively.

Project leads to impressive outcomes

Our seed funding of CAD $100,000 with WUSC in 2008 led to impressive gains, with a 54% increase on girls’ participation in remedial schooling in Kenya’s refugee camps (Dadaab and Kakuma) and improved learning outcomes for all children in the program.

With the experience and network gained from the 60 million girls Foundation’s investment in 2008 and in 2011 (in conjunction with a similar project in Malawi), WUSC was able to successfully leverage funding from UK’s FCDO through their Girls Education Challenge for the KEEP project.

A snapshot of the impact of WUSC’s KEEP project:

Since 2013, the project reached 37,266 girls in 89 schools (50% of schools were for refugee students, the remaining included children from host communities in Kenya).

In KEEP II, from 2017 to 2019 (the project continues until September 2022), a pre-COVID evaluation showed the following achievements:

57% increase in girls’ literacy scores compared to the baseline assessment, and a 25% improvement in numeracy scores.
31.3% improvement in average school attendance of girls, according to school registers.
6% increase in the number of girls saying that they decide, or decide jointly with family, at what age they will marry.

Remedial education, teacher training and coaching, including gender-responsive pedagogy, and innovative educational technology approaches are among the interventions targeted to improve girls’ learning outcomes.

KEEP has also achieved significant results on reducing gendered barriers to school attendance for girls through enhanced community engagement, counselling, conditional cash transfers, and provision of small grants to school governance bodies to support the implementation of gender-responsive school improvement plans.

In addition, WUSC has worked with community-based organizations in Kakuma (OPPEI) and Dadaab (Nomad Link Kenya) to re-enroll 500+ out-of-school girls. WUSC has supported OPPEI and Nomad Link (a partially refugee-led organization) to build their organizational capacity regarding financial management, gender, and project evaluation.

Without the initial investment by the 60 million girls Foundation, we believe that none of these results would have been achieved.