At the cutting edge>>DFID's Girls' Education Challenge


First published: 2012-05-29

SDDirect is delighted to be part of the management consortium for DFID’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) launched on 1st May. The GEC will support NGOs and private sector organisations to find effective and innovative ways of getting marginalised girls in the poorest countries in Africa and Asia into primary and lower secondary education, keeping them there, and making sure they learn.

The DFID’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) is being managed by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in alliance with SDDirect, FHI360 and Nathan Associates Ltd. SDDirect will be providing expert advice on gender and social exclusion to ensure that GEC applicants understand and analyse the social-economic contexts in which marginalised girls live to make sure that their applications adequately address the barriers they face in accessing and remaining in education.

The GEC is structured around two main windows:

A Step Change Window for projects in nine focus countries (Afghanistan, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) which will scale up innovative and proven interventions to enable a minimum of 14,000 girls per three year project to stay in school and increase their learning. This Window is now open and accepting concept notes. The deadline for concept notes is June 8th.

An Innovation Window for smaller-scale, more innovative pilot projects which have the potential to scale up. This window will be open for projects in any country where DFID has a presence. This will be launched by September 2012.

For more information on how to apply go to the DFID website.