Authors: Rokhaya Ndour and Ndeye Bolo Ly (Senegal) | Published on 18 April 2025
Question: How can we help more girls stay in school and succeed in their learning?
Answer: By encouraging community-driven actions that support girls’ education, address barriers to attendance, and create inclusive learning environments—especially in regions with high dropout rates.
What challenges do girls face in participating in education in Africa?
1. One of the most common reasons is that girls are kept at home to help with housework and younger children. These huge responsibilities prevent them from focusing on their studies or completing homework. This situation can cause them to be left behind at school.
2. Another major factor is menstruation. In many areas, girls face discomfort and embarrassment during their periods. Period poverty remains a challenge for many girls, as they struggle to afford basic menstrual products or to have access to proper facilities, leading to missed school days and health problems.
3. Early marriage is also a significant barrier, as many girls are married at an early age before they can finish their education. Unfortunately, they face many challenges which reduce their opportunities for a brighter future.
These issues together create a cycle that prevents many girls from staying in school.
Here are some targeted solutions that could help reduce these issues.
1. Housework
To reduce the burden on young girls and help them catch up on missed lessons; schools could introduce more flexible schedules or after-school programs. Additionally, at home, older siblings or family members, of all genders, could help with chores by sharing housework responsibilities.
One practical idea here is to work with the student and their family to create a schedule or rota of chores to ensure the balance is not burdensome for the learner.
2. Menstruation
To address the challenges girls face, we can provide washable, reusable pads to ensure they have access to proper menstrual hygiene.
Financial support can also help, such as scholarships or assistance with school supplies through NGOs.
Additionally, organizing workshops where girls learn to create their own reusable pads can empower them and support their communities.
It’s also important to sensitize both girls and boys about menstruation, emphasizing that it is a natural process and should not hinder a girl’s education
3. Early marriage
Reinforcing laws against child marriage and raising awareness about the importance of education for girls can help delay early marriages.
Additionally, helping vulnerable families by offering financial support can reduce the economic pressures that contribute to early marriage. These supports for families could come from several sources: Government budgets, international aid, social safety nets...etc. These supports can include scholarships, community development programs, or access to healthcare or social welfare systems. Finally, with combined efforts from the government, communities, and international organizations. it’s possible to see progress.
By tackling these issues, we can help create an environment where girls can thrive in school without barriers.
More ideas for solutions
Based on what has been said, we realize that the problem is more complex than we imagined. It is then necessary to resort to some additional solutions to support female retention in schools. Here are some practical ideas:
Community
- Creating a community committee composed of female teachers and supervisors who can mentor girls to avoid school dropout
- Involve parents and local authorities by organizing regular meetings to discuss issues that can lead girls to leave school like early marriage or other cultural norms
- The committee can also plan to collaborate with parents to have honest opinions about the barriers through surveys, conducting door to door interviews in families where girls are at risk to leave school in order to explore solutions to keep them to school can be helpful as well.
Parents
- Another interesting option is to invite parents to attend extracurricular activities like English club shows for them to observe their children’s performance
Social media
- Another external solution is to organize radio programs to talk about the importance of girls' education or Inviting girls that have succeeded in overcoming the challenges to share their success stories with the community.
- another useful action for their well-being can be to make campaign for infrastructures improvement like toilets, and secure school environment.
School
- Female teachers can organize catch up sessions or part-time classes for girls managing the household.
- Engaging girls themselves in the project would be very interesting, offering them training sessions on self-confidence health awareness and leadership might make them being more involved in this fight.
This is what we have identified as the challenges and solutions to retaining girls in education in our context. Which of our proposed solutions will you use first that best fits your context?