Background
The Patsy Collins Trust Fund Initiative was designed to support marginalized girls who face multiple social and economic barriers to attending school. These include girls from ethnic minorities or excluded castes; slum dwellers; girls at high risk of sexual exploitation, early marriage, and other forms of gender-based violence; the extremely poor; adolescent migrants; and rural girls in areas severely affected by climate change.
Intervention
PCTFI supports both students and out-of-school girls through a combination of increased access to formal and non-formal education; training on gender-equitable, inclusive, and relevant teaching methodologies; improved access to sexual and reproductive health information; platforms to develop girls’ leadership skills; training on financial literacy and savings; and use of technological tools. Through these interventions, PCTFI is directly expanding opportunities for more than 134,000 girls and women and indirectly benefiting another 346,000 girls, as well as more than 274,000 boys and men.
The project’s models integrate components of education, gender, sexual and reproductive health, economic empowerment, and access to information technology to expand girls’ opportunities to learn and experience positive transitions into adulthood.
Project achievements
In Rwanda, PCTFI worked with 4,000 adolescent savings groups, increasing the proportion of girls able to save money from 28% to 69% within the first 12 months. Students who were able to save were 12 percentage points less likely to drop out of school and 18 percentage points more likely to attend class.