Girls’ Education

Equal Measures 2030 has been working closely with stakeholders in both Kenya and Burkina Faso to map data insights and perspectives across the education in emergencies (EiE) landscapes in each country. The project is part of the Global Affairs Canada commitment to the Charlevoix declaration, which aims to improve education for girls and women affected by crises, as well as lead to the collection of better sex and age-disaggregated data on education in emergencies. Through this process, we found that the critical contributions of grassroots Women’s Rights Organisations (WROs) are often missing from the conversation. 

How Do We Transform EiE?  

1. By including, amplifying and respecting WROs at all levels: WROs are currently absent from national discussions on challenges and directions for EiE policy and interventions. Without representation from the grassroots, critical nuance is lost, creating conditions for gaps in service delivery.  To do this we can: 

• Decentralise coordination structures and involve WROs as partners at all stages, and not simply as token members. This will help ensure that working group evidence gathering and decision-making structures align with their organisational perspectives and capacities.    
• Clarify understandings of the sources and types of data needed for working group effectiveness, as well as mechanisms of data flow among working group members.      
• National working groups should also develop specific sub-groups focusing on issues of girls’ EiE.   

2. By expanding impact through wider and intersectoral programmes: Numerous programmes implemented by both WROs, INGOs and governments are achieving promising results, yet they are frequently localised in their impact and target only specific aspects of the EiE landscape.   

• Build stronger partnerships between programmes tackling different issues. Individual programmes are often limited in their scope to address the diversity of challenges girls face in EiE (e.g., patriarchal structures, lack of health and wellbeing services, GBV and FGM, poverty and economic pressures, additional challenges for children with disabilities) but this can change through strong partnerships and networks.
• Acknowledge the specific challenges facing girls and avoid current tendencies toward gender-neutral approaches when designing and implementing EiE programmes.

3. By improving the data capacities of WROs: WROs acknowledge the critical role of data collection from the grassroots and access to national databases both in developing their services and in conducting effective advocacy. However, they can be limited by internal capacities to access national data, engage in data sharing, ensure the reliability of data and effectively amplify their data analyses as tools for advocacy.

• Provide training and capacity building for WROs focused on best practice for data collection, analysis and visualisation.
 
• Improve accessibility and presentation of government databases, and equip grassroots organisations with clear instructions on how to access and use data. 

   4. By decolonising current global funding structures:Funding structures for WROs are largely imposed by global institutions with limited understanding of local contexts. This replicates colonial inequalities and frequently places grassroots organisations in positions where they need to compromise their missions to access basic resources.

• Funders, across the global development landscape, should heed growing calls for decolonial funding practices that implement participatory approaches to programme design and distribution of resources.
• Transition away from project-based mechanisms of funding distribution at the grassroots, which not only limits organisations’ flexibility in tackling the issues they see as most critical, but also creates risk of organisations becoming siloed within the issue-based boundaries dictated by funders.