GIRLS Inspire: Model for Women's Empowerment

Abstract

GIRLS Inspire was established as a Commonwealth of Learning (COL) project in partnership with community organisations in Bangladesh, India, Mozambique, Pakistan and Tanzania in 2016. Its overall goal is to help women and girls get the education and training they need to become empowered and fulfil their potential. The project reached over 92,000 female participants — over 18,000 of whom subsequently found work or became self-employed — provided 64 training courses, prevented 1,181 child marriages and engaged more than 507,000 community members. COL has since begun scaling up the GIRLS Inspire project in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan; has introduced Sri Lanka to the project; and has launched a women’s and girls’ empowerment project in Malawi that draws on several aspects of the original project. // The GIRLS Inspire project produced a successful model for providing education and relevant, marketable skills for unreached and marginalised girls in remote and rural areas in Bangladesh, India, Mozambique, Pakistan and Tanzania. We are already benefiting from the transferability of the model as we move through the scaling-up process and would like to share what we have learned with individuals, organisations, policymakers and development organisations who want to introduce similar projects through this publication: GIRLS Inspire: Model for women’s empowerment.