Supporting the Education of Marginalised Girls in Kailali (STEM)

The STEM project supported 7,046 girls and was implemented by Mercy Corps in Nepal.

STEM worked with marginalised out-of-school girls, recent drop-outs and girls at risk of drop out. These girls faced several barriers to progressing in their education which included pressure for early marriage, early pregnancy and negative gender norms which placed little value on their education and a lack of guidance from parents and a lack of an enabling home environment to learning. Several barriers to learning in schools included poor school infrastructure and a lack of WASH facilities, inadequate reproductive health education and services, inadequately trained teachers and gender-based violence in and on the way to schools. For those in the most remote communities, distance to school was also a barrier, as were a lack of opportunities to acquire life and vocational skills.

The project empowered girls to safely access education and economic activities. It aimed to increase attendance and create positive community attitudes towards girls’ education. To achieve this, STEM focused on improving girls’ educational outcomes, increasing their access to income-generating activities and cultivating an enabling environment for girls’ empowerment. It focused on various intervention areas impacting on girls’ learning and transition outcomes, such as teaching practices, safeguarding, self-confidence, gender sensitivity and sustainability.

Main activities

• Providing out-of-school girls and graduates with financial literacy, business skills development training and vocational training.
• Supporting girls’ transition to income generation via the Girls Transition Fund, which provided low-interest loans for girls to start or expand their new businesses.
• Training teachers on student-centred teaching methodologies and school management on effective school governance.
• Establishing Girls’ Clubs, which focused on both academic subjects and catch up (such as English, mathematics and science) and non-academic subjects, such as life skills, self-defence, and adolescent sexual and reproductive health.
• Implementing the ‘parents for quality education’ initiative which focused on supporting girls’ education and the ‘family dialogue’ training with parents or guardians of girls at risk, which focused on gender equality, equal division of household chores and household decision-making.

The project in numbers

Lessons learned

To improve livelihood opportunities, vocational training should be combined with building life skills. A combination of training on various skills (such as business skills, financial literacy, adult sexual and reproductive health, and vocational training) is more effective than only focusing on vocational.

It is important to contextualise teacher training and tailor it to the assessed needs of teachers. The teacher training delivered by governments can often be uniform across the country, but it is important to consider contextual differences, such as language of use and issues around the social caste systems. Teacher training should be designed after collecting and analysing the needs of the trainees themselves for better outcomes.

It is important to have a strong monitoring and evaluation system that informs programme adaptations. There should be a robust data management system to understand the impact of project interventions and to inform how interventions should be adapted in the changing contexts. By doing this, project interventions can continue to meet girls’ most pressing needs.

It is important to draw on local capacity and resources. Working with local teachers, programme graduates, female community health volunteers and cooperatives builds their skills and confidence. Local actors have an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the local context, culture, systems and institutions, enabling them to deliver activities effectively and efficiently.

Mercy Corps: https://www.mercycorps.org.uk/