International Day of the Girl marks a vital collaboration between HP Incorporated and Girl Rising to provide curriculum and technology solutions in favor of ten million students and teachers.
The three-year partnership will provide educational materials, technology, multimedia assets, activities, and lesson plans to students and teachers.
International Day of the Girl Child inspired partnership
The program announced on the International Day of the Girl Child 2019 supports HP’s goal of enabling better learning outcomes for 100 million people by 2025.
The US, India, and Nigeria are beneficiaries of the partnership. Over 750 million adults around the world lack primary education and literacy skills, and two-thirds of the population are women.
India and Nigeria represent a more significant proportion of this figure; 10.5 million children age 16 years are out of school in Nigeria, representing 41 percent of the population,
India has the world’s largest community of 10-24 year-old, and 47 million will drop out of school by the 10th grade.
HP and the non-profit organization believes educating girls and women around the world will contribute to solving climate challenges. Health, poverty, and other global issues will be addressed as well, said the CEO of Girl Rising.
giving girls access to education and opportunity is the most effective factor in transforming pressing global issues, including health, poverty, and climate change.
HP, on the International Day of the Girl said it would include Girl Rising’s teacher training modules focused on youth empowerment and life skills in their Education Edition PCs.
HP LIFE, a free e-learning plan by HP Foundation
The program, HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurship (HP LIFE), targets primary and secondary schools in the three regions.
The training materials will be pre-loaded onto Hp’s EHP Education Edition PC, and the curricula and a library of content will accompany the HP School Pack.
HP LIFE is a free e-learning plan by HP Foundation, together with the training modules from Girl Rising, entrepreneurship, and literacy skills development are provided.
Considering the impact of this partnership, HP will further lookout for additional opportunities to work with Girl Rising content and curricula distribution.
Additional partners will also come on board to scale the program over the next three years.
HP and Girl Rising previous collaborations
HP and Girl Rising collaborated in the past to launch the Hindi language version of Girl Rising in India in 2015.
The Girl Rising Creative Challenge launched in 2018, and the production and distribution of Brave Girl Rising earlier this year were also a collaboration of the two organizations.
The current partnership with the two organizations will advance learning outcomes and gender attitudes for both boys and girls.
Empowerment theory
Empowerment theory explores relationships between individuals within specific social, organizational, educational, and political environments and focuses on participation and collaboration of individuals within an organizing structure to focus their efforts on an identified outcome or common goal.
We can look at the International Day of the Girl partnership as a process by which individuals and groups gain power, access to resources and control over their own lives. In doing so, they gain the ability to achieve their highest personal and collective aspirations and goals. Succinctly:
Literacy empowers people to take action about their lives. Ability to read has been shown to increase individual participation in self-enriching goals. Literacy encourages individuals to seeks opportunities that helps them live up to their potentials, as well as increase their earning potential.
E-learning is an empowering tool for rural communities in that the individual learners are no longer deprived of education due to their location and inability to be provided with accommodations of a regular classroom.
With the consequent literacy arising from accessibility to resources of getting educated, we are relieved that “out-of-school” does not necessarily mean “out-of-reach”. E-learning is the light at the end of the tunnel. International Day of the Girl advocacy should spread out to other nations as well.
International Day of the Girl Child