Success Stories from Our Members in the field

Educating Girls Gives Them a Healthier Future, World Education

In rural Nepal, two-thirds of adolescent girls are not enrolled in formal schools, doomed to lives of low status and limited opportunities. In recent years, thousands of Nepali girls have fallen victim to sex traffickers who spirit them off to India where they are forced into prostitution.

World Education, an American nongovernmental organization, began the Girls' Access to Education program by developing a nine-month literacy curriculum that includes adolescent health and girls' empowerment information.

Girls acquire basic skills in reading writing and mathematics as they learn about reproductive health, the consequences of early marriage, adolescent pregnancy, unsafe sex and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as the dangers of trafficking, prostitution and other forms of abuse.

Since its inception in 1998, the GATE Program has provided opportunities for
more than 13,000 adolescent girls. More than 30 percent of the vanguard in GATE enrolled for the first time in primary school once they completed the program, and 40 percent continued their education in 2001.

World Education works through a network of local and international NGOs to implement the program. Currently operating in nine districts of Nepal, World Education plans to expand the GATE program into 15 districts by the end of 2003.