Obamas to announce global focus on the education of girls

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will announce a government initiative Tuesday to support the education of girls around the globe. As part of the new effort, called “Let Girls Learn,” federal agencies will direct resources toward helping girls attend school.

 

The new effort was inspired by a joint Oval Office meeting the couple had in 2013 with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for speaking out in support of the right of girls to go to school.

“This is the first time to really have a whole of government effort that takes all of the things we have done, [and] leverage them and expand them under the banner of the U.S. government to really focus on the needs of adolescent girls,” said Tina Tchen, chief of staff to the first lady and executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls.

Like other programs the Obama administration has launched, including “My Brother’s Keeper” — an initiative by the president focused on young black men in the U.S., the global girls program hopes to attract private and non-profit support. Resources from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) already targeting adolescent girls will now fall under the “Let Girls Learn” banner, and Michelle Obama will promote a new Peace Corps training program that will teach its 7,000 volunteers to address barriers to girls’ education in the communities in which they serve, including sexual violence, school fees and health care. The Obama administration’s 2016 budget includes $250 million toward the effort.

Administration officials said having the Obamas direct their energy toward supporting the education of girls, and will also put pressure on foreign governments to do more to promote gender equality among youth. Last year, Michelle Obama expressed her support for school girls kidnapped in Nigeria by joining in the #BringBackOurGirls online campaign and gave the weekly radio address traditionally given by the president on the topic. She has also encouraged government and community leaders worldwide to begin to invest in girls, rather than countenancing child marriage and funding boys’ education over that of girls.

Gayle Smith, the National Security Council’s senior director for development and democracy, said with the announcement of the initiative “you’ll see us doing much more to get other countries to step up.”

“It’s really critical, including for our national security,” Smith said. “We know that when girls are educated it has got a huge economic and stability impact, and then we widen the circle of potential leaders. On the other side, you have the girls kidnapped in Nigeria, incidences of rape in Darfur, huge numbers of girls as refugees in Syria.”