Obamas to announce expanded program to provide girls an education

[babylonsister]

Can you imagine a rethug doing this? All they want to do is deny women everything!



Obamas to announce expanded program to provide girls an education

By Ellie Silverman

McClatchy Washington Bureau
March 3, 2015


WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will announce Tuesday that the administration, along with the Peace Corps, will expand a program to help adolescent girls across the world receive an education.

The Let Girls Learn initiative will build on a United States Agency for International Development campaign launched last year to provide an education to the more than 60 million girls not in school. It focuses on empowerment and leadership, health and nutrition and protection against gender-based violence protection and forced marriages, among other issues.

The Peace Corps will look for ways to overcome the barriers that prevent girls from completing their educations, including the cost of a uniform, school fees, lack of textbooks, Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet told reporters.

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The program will start with 11 countries the first year: Albania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Georgia, Ghana, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Togo and Uganda. More countries will be included the following year, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.

The Obamas will officially announce the program Tuesday afternoon in the East Room of the White Hose.

Obama’s budget recommends $250 million in new and reallocated money for girls’ programs worldwide, including eduction, Mrs. Obama’s Chief of Staff Tina Tchen said.

USAID has already invested money to Let Girls Learn, part of $1 billion invested each year in education programs. The organization has helped train more than 300,000 teachers worldwide and provide more than 35 million textbooks and teaching material each year, said Susan Markham, USAID’s senior coordinator for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/03/03/258371/obamas-to-announce-expanded-program.html

[loyalsister]

1. This is awesome!

And extremely consequential. I bet there will be some republican idiot who will find fault with it, though.

[hifiguy]

2. That is a damn fine thing to do. nt