Hundreds of millions US dollars pledged for new Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action for girls

New York City, September 24, 2014 – The Global Partnership for Education announced today it will join a broad coalition committed to getting more girls around the world to go to school and learn at higher levels of achievement than ever before.

The commitment to action, “Girls Charge”, was unveiled today at the 2014 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia and Board Chair of the Global Partnership for Education. It is a CGI Commitment to Action by the Brookings Institution and 29 partner organizations. Read GPE's full commitment.

“One of the Global Partnership’s strategic objectives is that all girls in GPE-supported countries successfully complete primary school and go to secondary school in a safe and supportive learning environment,” Gillard said. “We are delighted that “Girls Charge” will generate more awareness, enthusiasm and practical support for the future well-being of millions of girls and the societies they live in.”

Through “Girls Charge”, non-governmental organizations, foundations, governments and others are committing to work in the coming five years on fundamental girls’ education issues: helping girls attend and complete primary and secondary school, making schools safer, improving the quality of learning for girls, supporting their entry into higher education and employment, and helping local leaders to champion this work at the grassroots level. Supporting partners pledged several hundred million dollars collectively toward programs that will reach millions of girls across the globe.

In the past 12 years, the Global Partnership for Education and its partners have helped enroll approximately 10 million girls in school, 8 million of whom have entered school between 2011 and 2014.

By financing national education sector plans that prioritize girls’ education, the Global Partnership expects to increase the primary completion rate of girls in GPE partner developing countries from 74% to 84% between 2015 and 2018, translating into 2.5 million more girls completing primary school. Over this same four-year period, Global Partnership support to developing countries will secure a 10% increase in the lower secondary school completion rate for girls, from 44% to 54%, or 2 million more girls.

Also, in January 2015, the Global Partnership will launch a new results-based funding model, which will incentivize its developing country partners to collect more and better education data, including data about girls’ access to quality education and their learning outcomes. The availability of such data will significantly improve education planning and execution.

_______________________________________________________________________________

The Global Partnership for Education is made up of nearly 60 developing country governments, as well as donor governments, civil society/non-governmental organizations, teacher organizations, international organizations, and the private sector and foundations, whose joint mission is to galvanize and coordinate a global effort to provide a good quality education to children, prioritizing the poorest and most vulnerable. The Global Partnership for Education has allocated US$3.9 billion over the past decade to support education reforms in some of the world's poorest countries.

The Clinton Global Initiative was established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton. An initiative of the Clinton Foundation, it convenes global leaders to create and implement solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 180 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date members of the CGI community have made more than 2,900 commitments, which are already improving the lives of more than 430 million people in over 180 countries.