In Pakistan millions of adolescent girls (9-19 years) are deprived of education, learning, skills, voice, rights, and confidence; they are used as collateral in patriarchal and feudal communities for early child marriages and domestic labor; these are the target group by Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) to address gender equality through education, skills and empowerment.
“SS-Advancing Action for Adolescent Girls” offers flexible schooling options for catch up TARL foundational learning, second chance basic education (grades 5-10), life skills and TEVT for vulnerable and disadvantaged adolescent girls (aged 9-19). The girls identified are drop outs from schools over 6 to 24 months and/or never enrolled who can complete primary, middle and grade 10 level with life skills and EdTech. The magic of SS is its speed of achieving learning milestones with agency for all cohorts in 6 -18 months! For girls never enrolled in schools, the project offers a 60-90-day TARL program or “Chalo Parho Barho”, or “Let us read and grow”, providing bursts of remedial learning in foundational literacy and numeracy; for girls who dropped out of school in the past two years or less, the program provides opportunities for completely primary, middle/secondary grades. For 14 years + TEVT is offered with Life skills and digital learning/financial inclusion.
The program has completed 3 phases with 50,000 adolescent girls (2018-2022) meeting with absolute success in 3 districts of South Punjab (Muzaffargarh, Bahawalpur and Rahim yar Khan) and Lahore supported by FCDO and School Education Dept. (SED). It has been evaluated externally (one completed and one near completion) revealing the power of non-cognitive life skills for vulnerable young girls/women as triggers for academic achievement. 9000 adolescent girls have completed certified TEVT in traditional and non-traditional digital skills courses.
The project has successfully mainstreamed 13000+ OOS girls, into formal schools (Grades 6-9). The girls appeared in the official board examinations (administered by the government) and as many as 92% of them cleared the exams.
Our learning solution comprises of 3 strands of empowerment; Remedial Learning (https://itacec.org/SiyaniSahelian/#id100), TVET (https://itacec.org/SiyaniSahelian/tvet.html) & LSBE (https://itacec.org/SiyaniSahelian/life_skills_based_education.html) .
We have an in-house training team, who can give orientation on the program toolkit and activities. They can be reached out at fida@itacec.org
