• Girls wave to the camera at the Udaan School in the Hardoi district of the Uttar Pradesh in India. This residential school's accelerated learning program for girls aged 10-14 is designed to help never-enrolled girls or drop-outs complete primary school (grades 1-5) within 11 months.

  • Girls studying language at the Udaaan School in Uttar Pradesh, India. Since the Udaan School opened in 1999, 98 percent of the girls have passed the 5th-grade exam and 90 percent continued their schooling in a formal school, receiving grades that are higher on average than regular students.

  • A girl at the Udaan School in Uttar Pradesh, India, learns how to ride a bike. Bicycling is off-limits for girls, who are told that it could prevent them from having children later. But for many girls living in rural areas, it's the safest, fastest way for them to get to school.

  • In the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, CARE provides warm, nutritious meals at school so students are motivated to come to class and can focus when they get there.

  • Kavita, 11, is a bright and shy girl who dreams to one day be District Magistrate. She walks more than a kilometer every day to attend class at Primary School in Uttar Pradesh, India. When she gets home, she does her homework by the light of a kerosene lamp, as her village does not have electricity.

  • Thanks to a CARE sanitation program, there are now clean bathrooms and safe water at 14-year-old Sara Akinyi’s school in Kenya. That means more girls come to class because they have a private place to change sanitary pads and go to the bathroom.

  • Malita (name changed), 15, wants to be an engineer or a pilot. Malita would still be toiling her days away on the land instead of learning geography if it weren’t for a boisterous group of women from her village in Malawi that persuaded Malita’s mother to re-enroll her in school as part of CARE's Mothers Group program.

  • Soraia, 11, does her homework in her family's small goods shop in the Maliana District, Timor-Leste. Soraia plans to be Minister for the Environment. She sings, dances and enjoys IQ tests as part of CARE's Young Women's Education in a Young Nation program.

  • Students at Youth Vocational Training Centre in Dili, Timor-Leste.

  • Amina, 20, is a foundation student at Youth Vocational Training Centre in Dili, Timor-Leste.

  • Nastura studies a lesson outside her classroom in Parwan Province, Afghanistan.

  • Thavy Thonglean, 30, teaches grade 1 at Teum Leu Village primary school in Cambodia.  She is pictured here with Put Kai, who is 6 years old and wants to be a nurse. 

  • CARE works in Ratanakiri, Cambodia to ensure girls learn both their local indigenous language as well as Khmer, the national language of Cambodia, so they can easily transition into secondary school.