Imagine a school with no toilets.
You are a student. How would it feel to know that every time you had to relieve yourself, you would have to run home? Imagine that home is miles away. Now imagine that you are a thirteen-year-old girl and you are menstruating. You have no sanitary products, so you must use the toilet every hour. For one week every month, you cannot go to school – that is if you are even one of the few girls in Guinea who are lucky enough to be in school at all.
For all children in rural areas of Guinea, getting an education is hard. While the barriers to education affect both boys and girls, these barriers consistently and disproportionally hinder girls.
School fees, uniforms, and school supplies add up and can literally put a family into debt. In large families, parents often choose a lucky few to go to school, and sons are chosen before daughters. Families in communities where School-to-School works in Guinea often have many children, and one parent interviewed said he had to resort to keeping his daughters out of school to keep his family out of debt.
Household chores are given to both sons and daughters, but again, the most difficult tasks disproportionately fall on girls. Girls’ chores, like fetching water, washing clothes, and helping in the kitchen, tend to be more physically exhausting and time consuming than boys’ chores. Household work comes before school work, so girls might not start homework until after dinner- or rather, after night falls. In a place with no electricity, this means girls cannot do homework. Even at school, teachers are more likely to ask girls over boys to perform chores like fetching water or gathering wood.
It is obvious how a lack of latrines and proper sanitation would affect girls more than boys- so much so that once a girl reaches puberty, she can be expected miss an entire week of school each month. This means that even before factoring in that girls are more likely than boys to arrive at school late because of chores, a girl will still only attend 75% of school days.
The table below shows primary school completion rates; Guinea has one of the lowest rates world wide, with only 3% of its poorest girls completing primary school.
You are a student. How would it feel to know that every time you had to relieve yourself, you would have to run home? Imagine that home is miles away. Now imagine that you are a thirteen-year-old girl and you are menstruating. You have no sanitary products, so you must use the toilet every hour. For one week every month, you cannot go to school – that is if you are even one of the few girls in Guinea who are lucky enough to be in school at all.
For all children in rural areas of Guinea, getting an education is hard. While the barriers to education affect both boys and girls, these barriers consistently and disproportionally hinder girls.
School fees, uniforms, and school supplies add up and can literally put a family into debt. In large families, parents often choose a lucky few to go to school, and sons are chosen before daughters. Families in communities where School-to-School works in Guinea often have many children, and one parent interviewed said he had to resort to keeping his daughters out of school to keep his family out of debt.
Household chores are given to both sons and daughters, but again, the most difficult tasks disproportionately fall on girls. Girls’ chores, like fetching water, washing clothes, and helping in the kitchen, tend to be more physically exhausting and time consuming than boys’ chores. Household work comes before school work, so girls might not start homework until after dinner- or rather, after night falls. In a place with no electricity, this means girls cannot do homework. Even at school, teachers are more likely to ask girls over boys to perform chores like fetching water or gathering wood.
It is obvious how a lack of latrines and proper sanitation would affect girls more than boys- so much so that once a girl reaches puberty, she can be expected miss an entire week of school each month. This means that even before factoring in that girls are more likely than boys to arrive at school late because of chores, a girl will still only attend 75% of school days.
The table below shows primary school completion rates; Guinea has one of the lowest rates world wide, with only 3% of its poorest girls completing primary school.
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| Table courtesy of The Girl Effect: www.girleffect.org |
Great strides have been made to give girls all over the word access to education. More and more girls are starting school, but finishing primary school remains a major challenge. And it is clear that girls need special help and attention- in the classroom, at home, and in their communities.
School-to-School’s Girls’ Education Program will target girls and their teachers, families, and communities. The program will be implemented in 15 schools, and STS will also implement 5 community forums to reach out to parents, teachers, student representatives, school directors, religious leaders, and local government officials. The objective of these workshops is to sensitize local community members to the importance of girls' education and develop community action plans to address the barriers to girls' education. STS will also do its part to overcome these barriers by providing girls' clubs and scholarships to 375 girls in these 15 schools; proven methods of improving girls' opportunities to participate and achieve in school.
Very interesting post. I am aware of recent RCTs that measured the effectiveness of CCT schemes, free uniforms, de-worming pills and iron supplements. It would be great to use a RCT to quantify the impact of building toilet facilities on girl's absenteeism and performance.
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