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Photo provided courtesy of 10x10 Educate Girls: Change the World

WELCOME!

If you get a chance, please see “Girl Rising,” an extraordinary film about the indisputable impact of educating girls. It's available in a low-resolution here. It's available on Netflix. Better yet, you can purchase it directly from Girl Rising. Please also see the Girl Rising Curriculum produced by the Pearson Foundation.

The film really stirred me and so this course honors that film along with the need to keep the issue of girls education front and center. Of the course of our seven weeks together, we will explore four central themes:

Access to education: enrollment, retention, equity, obstacles to overcome

Education in emergencies: preparedness and planning; girls and disaster risk reduction; the crisis of vulnerability

Education and public health: hygiene, public safety, water, policy, child marriage

Education and empowerment: human rights, participation, freedom

This course is about exploring ideas and mobilizing change. Of course, we will only touch the surface. It is said that the humanities teach a little about a lot and the sciences teach a lot about a little. Perhaps. It will be up to you to go as deep or wide, and as local or global as you want. One fact is certain about this course, though: it is a call to action.

Informed learning + Teacher Multipliers ÷ Time = Educated Girls. It’s a complicated equation, but think of it this way—we don’t have a moment to lose. Let’s do the math and science. Let’s teach each other. And, better yet, let’s make certain that girls are educated and can go as far as their imagination can take them. They are, after all, half the sky.