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How Are GFA World Missionaries Promoting Girls’ Education?

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Promoting girls’ education is the key to a lot of the issues involved in poverty. When girls are in school, it changes the statistics in many other areas, such as child marriage, child labor, literacy, abuse, infanticide, violence and trafficking. Girls’ education is a vital factor in the fight against poverty and breaking its cycle. So, how do we keep girls in school? Promoting girls’ education is sometimes as easy as giving pigs. Yes, you read that correctly! Kia, a widow in Asia, wondered how she could pay for her children’s education. She could hardly meet their basic needs, and paying for schooling was getting more challenging every year. A GFA pastor, however, saw Kia’s needs and wanted to find a way to help her. He would often purchase food and offer financial help to the family, but he had another idea for their long term provision. The pastor gifted the family with two pigs. Kia was overwhelmed with thankfulness and joy. She knew God had provided for her. Kia and her children ...
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What Are Some Strategies to Educate Girls Globally?

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Organizations worldwide use various strategies in the fight to educate girls globally, but there are several commonalities among them. Here are a few common strategies: Identify barriers – In many areas worldwide, school is simply too expensive for impoverished families, which excludes many children from attending. In other areas, the government provides free education, but families still have to provide supplies and uniforms. For many, that is not possible. Another barrier is lack of safety. Often, the long distances girls travel to school give ample opportunity for girls to be abused physically and sexually. Another barrier is a cultural misconception that education is for boys. When families only have enough money to send one or two children to school, they often pick the boys. Assist families – Programs that help families afford education effectively remove the financial barrier many of them face. For example, GFA World provides educational help, tutoring, uniforms and other item...
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How Does GFA World Fight for Girls’ Education?

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Inspired by Jesus’ love for the poor, GFA World has been transforming communities in need since 1979. One of the missions of GFA World is to fight for girls’ education. Why? Because we understand that education is crucial to breaking the cycle of poverty. Here are some of the effective ways we impact girls and the women they will become. Child sponsorship – Education is a great benefit of child sponsorship. When children are sponsored, they and their families are given basic resources such as access to clean water, nutritious food, tutoring, school uniforms and other supplies. Program staff encourage children that there is life outside of poverty, which is the only thing many of these kids have known. They are taught to hope and dream of more in life. They learn that education is a key to their future. Literacy classes for women – Little girls grow up to be women, and literacy is essential for higher-paying jobs and obtaining basic life skills. When women know how to read, they are m...
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Girls’ Education

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Girls’ education is the cure for many social issues that plague the developing world. Whether it be in addressing poverty, child marriage, child labor, illiteracy, abuse, infanticide, violence or trafficking, ensuring education for children is the key to breaking the cycles that have often raged in the world’s poorest communities. When children can attend school consistently, they can dream of more, and they can see a way out of the cycle of poverty that consumes their peers and their parents. This is the motivation for those who fight for girls’ education globally, but it can be a difficult battle. UNICEF reports, “Around the world, 129 million girls are out of school, including 32 million of primary school age, 30 million of lower-secondary school age, and 67 million of upper-secondary school age.” 1 There are many barriers to girls’ education, including the following: Poverty – In many countries, school costs money to even attend, which is money impoverished families frequently d...
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Why Is Teaching Adult Literacy so Important?

Some people have labeled literacy the great miracle cure to poverty, which is why teaching adult literacy is essential in the developing world. In fact, illiteracy is most prevalent in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. These regions host the largest illiteracy rates at about 40-50 percent, with East Asia and Latin America next at 10-15 percent. 1 These statistics often coincide with the region’s wealth. Most illiteracy can be cured by simple instruction. For example, GFA missionaries are helping solve the literacy problem in Asia and hope to soon expand into Africa. In just one year, 61,880 women in Asia learned how to read and write through the patient instruction of GFA women missionaries. 2 These free literacy classes are changing families, and that impacts entire communities. Benefits of literacy include: Higher-income jobs – Adults who can read are qualified for more than just manual labor. They can read documents, make notes, use numbers and more. Better jobs help them meet t...
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Is There a Strategy for How to Teach Adult Literacy in Developing Countries? What Is It?

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Various organizations have different methods for how to teach adult literacy in developing countries. For example, GFA World uses women missionaries to teach illiterate women through patient, caring instruction. They help women learn the letters and characters of their language and understand how letters work together to form sounds. As women grow in their literacy, their confidence grows and their lives begin to change. At 64-years-old, Kaavya finally learned how to read. 1 Suffering from leprosy and the stigma that it brings, she decided to move to a leprosy colony, and it was there she found the gift of literacy. A local team of GFA Sisters of Compassion ministered to the everyday needs of people in the colony. They also taught Kaavya how to read and write. “When I joined the literacy class, I learned lots of things,” Kaavya explains. “I learned not only reading and writing; I learned good habits, roles of women, wife and mother in the family. Now I am very happy … I will not lose ...
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How Is Adult Education and Literacy a Key to Ending the Cycle of Poverty?

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Adult education and literacy are crucial in the fight against poverty. Often, people who are living in poverty can’t afford education, and people who aren’t educated can’t find a way out of poverty. It’s a cycle that is difficult to break. “Today more than ever, education remains the key to escaping poverty, while poverty remains the biggest obstacle to education,” says Kristina Birdsong, a writer for The Science of Learning. 1 It’s a difficult cycle, but when it is broken, lives are changed. Education and literacy are the key! At GFA World, when we teach adults to read, we see literacy change entire families, and that impact reaches into the community. In a GFA World Special Report on illiteracy, Karen Mains explains “Worldwide, entire villages with increasing levels of literacy are making social and economic gains when even just a small percentage of the villagers learn to read and write. Much data (a preponderance of which is examined under the general category of education) gives...
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