Girls in Malindi District, halfway up Kenya’s coast, face much steeper obstacles than boys in getting a primary education. Girls are expected to take on heavy domestic workloads, and early marriages and teenage pregnancies are common. One by one, though, the girls of Masindeni Primary School are improving this picture. Their story was recently highlighted in a report by Kenya’s Ministry of Education on the first decade of the country’s Education for All initiative.

Masindeni, a small school 39 miles from the nearest town, is one of the schools where the Aga Khan Foundation’s Education for Marginalized Children in Kenya (EMACK) project has targeted enhancing girls’ participation in education. Through its program for marginalized schools and groups, Aga Khan Foundation has trained education officials, teachers and community members. The Foundation has also equipped them with skills and knowledge to create a gender-friendly learning environment. This includes establishing Girls’ Forums, groups within project schools where girls take part in debates and other activities that promote their skills and self-esteem.

In December 2008, four girls from Masindeni Primary School, together with their teacher, attended a five-day training for Girls’ Forum leaders in Marafa Division of Malindi District, along with 38 other girls and their teachers. At the end of the training, each school developed a plan of action for how they would improve girls’ performance in education, change attitudes about girls’ education, and reduce early marriages and teenage pregnancies among students.

The Masindeni girls moved quickly. The next month as the new academic year began, the Girls’ Forum leaders went from classroom to classroom through the whole school, getting names of girls who hadn’t finished the previous term or who hadn’t come back for the new term. They then established the whereabouts of those girls, and fanned out to the villages, making inquiries. They managed to learn that seven girls had dropped out of school: three due to pregnancies and four others who left studies to work as domestic laborers in the nearby towns of Malindi and Watamu.

The Girls’ Forum leaders visited the homes of the girls who had dropped out due to pregnancies and talked to the girls’ parents about the importance of education and the need for their daughters to return to school.

For each year that a girl stays in school past fourth grade, her income later as an adult will grow on average 20 percent. What’s more, girls’ education means better health for the community at large: where girls receive five years of school, child survival rates rise 40 percent on average.

The Masindeni girls also spoke with school leaders, who had attended the training on gender and education, which had made clear the challenges that Kenyan girls faced; they were keen to support the effort to bring back lapsed girl students. As a result of the Masindeni girls’ initiative, two teenage mothers returned to school to pursue their dreams of becoming teachers.

Two of the girls who had gone to work as domestic workers returned to class as well.

The teamwork among students, teachers and school leaders gave the Girls’ Forum members the courage to light a path back to education for other girls.

From just 33 percent when the school started in the 1970s, the proportion of girl students has risen to 48 percent in 2012. This past March, a service group from Aga Khan Academies in Mombasa, called “Because I am a Girl,” organized a charity concert with Kenyan pop singer Wahu to raise awareness about girls’ struggle for equality. It raised US$4,711 for facilities that serve disadvantaged girls in the Mombasa area.

The Aga Khan Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development have helped to start over 220 Girls’ Forum groups in Kenya’s Coast and North Eastern provinces. The girls receive encouragement to meet regularly and talk about issues they face in safe friendships, academics and children’s rights. Some parents contribute funds for the girls’ activities at the start of each term.

Other school efforts include training for teachers as well as for children’s parents and caregivers on how to support and improve girls’ achievement in school.

Education for Marginalized Children in Kenya (EMACK) is an initiative of the Aga Khan Foundation and made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development.

Pictured above: Girls from Masindeni school attend a five-day training for Girls’ Forum leaders in Malindi District, along with 38 other girls and their teachers.