EDUCATION

WomensTrust sponsors two programs of their own in Pokuase and supports another in the United States to encourage girls to stay in school:

~Keep-Girls-In-School is a scholarship program established by WomensTrust in September of 2004.

~Ghana Literacy Program & Girls Exploration and Empowerment Club was established by WomensTrust in the Fall of 2007 as an after school enrichment program to support girls in their studies. It is also known as the GEEC Club.

~Educational Pathways International is a United States-based non-profit foundation that recognizes, nurtures, and supports gifted young people in developing areas of the world through university scholarships, thus enabling them to develop their talents and make a positive difference in their native land.

 Education in Ghana has traditionally been focused on male children. Educating a daughter was likened to planting your neighbor's garden as you would never reap the benefit of either. Today, only about half of all girls enrolled in school make it past the eighth grade. Literacy rates in Ghana are 49.8 percent for females, and 66.4 percent for males (according to the CIA World Factbook).

There is a saying coined by sociologist Robert Morrison MacIver that is driving a change in attitude in Ghana:

"When you educate a man you educate an individual; when you educate a woman you educate a whole family."

Statistics for educating a girl child in Ghana are still not good. It costs a family $100 U.S. per year to send a child to primary school, $125 per year for junior secondary school (JSS), and $175 per year for senior secondary school (SSS). Women living on $2 a day or less struggle to feed their families. School, in many cases, is prohibitively expensive.