CAMFED alumna named UN Girls’ Education Initiative Youth Representative
Today, on International Youth Day, the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) announced that CAMFED alumna Alice from Zambia was chosen as its Global Advisory Committee Youth Representative.
Alice will be sharing the experience and expertise of the young women leaders in the pan-African CAMA network to inform global education policy.
Alice, selected for a CAMFED secondary school scholarship in rural Zambia after poverty forced her to drop out of school at 14, today works with the school boards and district authorities that once supported her, using her empathy and experience to ensure that girls stay in school and learn – helping to prevent child marriage and early pregnancy, and breaking the cycle of poverty.
In the concluding blog for UNGEI’s #YouthLeads series, Five strategies to achieve the 2030 education goals, Alice reflects on her own experience working with communities to break down the barriers to marginalized girls’ education.
She describes some of the strategies required if the world wants to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals 4 (Quality Education) and 5 (Gender Equality) by 2030. These are the goals upon which all other global goals are predicated, and where youth leadership will make the vital difference.
This includes investing in youth networks, which can help to provide the nuanced psycho-social support so critical to vulnerable young people at school – a deep understanding of which can only come from those who have walked in the same shoes.
Young women in the CAMA network partner with teachers to deliver psycho-social support to vulnerable students