Australia announces additional funding for project for girls

The Australian government has announced additional financial aid to a project working for women and girls in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The Commonwealth of Learning’s (COL) project “Reaching the Unreached” (RtU) is aimed at providing education and training to 40,000 women and girls who cannot attend school in remote and disadvantaged communities due to early marriage and cultural norms in these countries.

With the additional funds, the project will now reach more women and girls to provide secondary schooling and skills development training through open and distance learning, COL said in a statement on Tuesday.

The announcement was made by the Minister for International Development Concetta Fierravanti-Wells during the Global Citizen Live, an event related to the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London.

In India, the RtU project covers 150 villages in the Satara district of Maharashtra. These communities were selected because of dropout rates arising from migration, poverty and long distances to school.

According to a 2017 Baseline-Endline Report, 25,284 women and girls in these communities throughout India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, completed life skills and vocational skills training, with 4,724 successfully moving into income-generating activities.