Making Secondary Education Accessible for Girls with and without Disabilities - The case of Pakistan

Abstract

PCF10 Sub-theme: Promoting Equity and Inclusion [PRESENTATION] // Bedari is a rights based NGO working in Pakistan for promotion and protection of human rights of women and girls. Girls’ Secondary Education is one of the core themes Bedari works on. Bedari believes that education is not only about acquiring a degree or a certificate, it is about the life skills and about knowledge around the rights and the capacity to claim them. Bedari, during the last fifteen years, has supported 1000s of girls to continue their education by enhancing their mobility, helping them strengthen their life skills and asserting their agency. During this, Bedari has gained marvelous understandings of community perspectives and barriers to girls’ education at community and policy levels. Bedari has learnt that a small contribution towards enhancing girls’ mobility not only ensures their access to education, but also contributes in their empowerment, reduces the incidence of child marriages and enables them to deal with gender based violence. // Session Objectives: // Demonstrate how small contributions in girls’ mobility and self-growth through community engagement can empower them and ensures access to education. // Share the good practices of working with government to enhance girls’ secondary education // Showcasing key learning around working for educating girls with disabilities // After a short presentation on the context of Girls’ Education in Pakistan, the moderator will invite the panelists for the discussion. Discussion will be in the form of a talk show. The questions will be around; their experiences (specifically in COVID Context), opportunities to work around inclusion and equity, challenges and their mitigation, and key takeaways. The panelists from different stakeholders including civil society, donor organization and government expert will be a great mix to provide the audience an insight on above mentioned themes from different perspectives. It will provide an opportunity to the participants from different countries to explore the possibilities of replication in their context. // Paper ID 312