Hillary Clinton leads the CHARGE to help 14m girls get quality education

More than $600 million from a new collaboration will help 14 million girls go to school and get a better quality of learning.

Over 30 companies, civil society organisations, multilaterals and governments have come together as CHARGE – the Collaborative for Harnessing Ambition and Resources for Girls’ Education.

The group was announced at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Julia Gillard, chair of the Global Partnership for Education.

The initiative will:

• Ensure that girls can attend and complete primary and secondary school
• Make schools safer and more secure
• Improve the quality of learning for girls
• Support girls’ transition to higher education and employment
• Cultivate local country leaders to champion this work at the grassroots level

Secretary Clinton said: “We know when girls have access to quality education in both primary and secondary schools, cycles of poverty are broken, economies grow, glass ceilings crack and potential is unleashed.

“The scale of this commitment matches the gravity of the challenge. Ensuring every girl receives a quality secondary education will take all of us, governments, civil society, the private sector, multilateral organisations, the entire international community working together.”

CHARGE includes several supporters of A World at School’s #EducationCountdown campaign such as Brac International, Plan International, Discovery Communications and Chime For Change.

Projects over the next five years include improving learning and life transitions in Bangladesh, preventing school-related gender-based violence in Asia, transforming schools in Pakistan’s most remote areas and helping girls from disadvantaged backgrounds go to secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa.

Julia Gillard – who is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institute – said: “We are here today to make a difference, to tackle head-on the next generation of girls education issues. It is our job to ensure that girls not only have access to education, but also to a quality education and unbounded horizons for future opportunity. Our work begins now.”