British Council and Oando Foundation Announce Clinton

Global Initiative Commitment to Action to Enroll 230,000

Nigerian Girls in School

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oando Foundation

and the British Council announced today the launch of
Reach a Girl, Teach a Girl: Girls School Enrollment in
Nigeria, a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment
to Action aimed at enrolling approximately 230,000
Nigerian girls in primary school over the next three
years. The six million dollar program also outlines a
plan to help more than 21,000 girls transition from primary to secondary school.
Reach a Girl, Teach a Girl will join commitments by more than 30 public, private, and grassroots
organizations as part of CHARGE (the Collaborative Harnessing Ambition and Resources for Girls
Education), a global collective to advance girls education worldwide. Announced by former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Clinton Foundation Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton, and former
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard at the 10th Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative,
CHARGEs commitments will focus on five key areas in global girls education which include:
Ensuring girls enter and stay in school through secondary education; ensuring that schools are safe
and facilities are girl friendly; improving the quality of learning opportunities for girls; supporting
girls from secondary school to post-secondary school and preparing them for the workforce; and
supporting developing country leaders to catalyze change in girls education.
We know when girls have access to quality education in both primary and secondary schools, cycles
of poverty are broken, economies grow, glass ceilings crack and potential is unleashed, said
Secretary Clinton. The scale of this commitment matches the gravity of the challenge. Ensuring
every girl receives a quality secondary education will take all of us, governments, civil society, the
private sector, multilateral organizations, the entire international community working together.
While the Nigerian government has committed to universal primary education for all, the staggering
population growth has made achieving this commitment out of the governments reach. Today,
Nigeria has the most out-of-school children in the world 10.5 million. Over five million of the out-o-school children are girls many of them in northern Nigeria. The British Council and Oando
Foundation have partnered to help close that gap through an initiative that bridges advocacy efforts
with infrastructure development.
Our track record of success in adopting and transforming schools across the country is directly
connected to our familiarity with the social issues Nigerians face. Our partnership with the British
Council is an opportunity to utilize our complementary skills to remove the barriers that inhibit
Nigerian girls education, said Tokunboh Durosaro, Executive Director of Oando Foundation.
Research commissioned by the British Council reveals social norms governing the position of women
and girls in northern Nigeria have a harmful impact on girls education. A number of additional

factors, including poor and insufficient infrastructure, opportunity costs of early employment, social
barriers and safety, have been cited as reasons for the large number of out-of-school girls in nigeria .
Reach a Girl, Teach a Girl focuses on four main components:
Community engagement via school-based management committees A media advocacy campaign
School infrastructure improvement An exchange program between traditional leaders to breakdown
harmful social norms.
The British Council is extremely pleased to be working alongside Oando Foundation on the Reach a
Girl, Teach a Girl Programme. Working together will enable us to leverage the considerable
experience and expertise of our organisations. The British Council is proud to demonstrate the UKs
commitment to ensuring that girls and women are able to play a full and productive role in Nigerian
society. Our ambition is to convene a broad range of partners such as Oando Foundation, who are
committed to ensuring girls receive quality education, said Connie Price, Director Nigeria for British
Council.
Operating in Nigeria since 1943, the British Council has a developed an excellent platform to
execute this project.The British Council has trained over 10,000 teachers across the country and is
helping to strengthen the Nigerian education system through its participation in DFIDs Education
Sector Support Program. The partners are hoping additional organizations and companies will join
them in meeting the six million dollar budget to sustain the program. Reach a Girl, Teach a Girl
reflects a broader movement to support girls.
ABOUT OANDO FOUNDATION:
In 2011, Oando Foundation was registered as an independent charity in Nigeria . The foundation
focuses on empowering communities and supporting the Nigerian government in realizing its
development goals. The goal of the foundation is to foster sustainable development by contributing
to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal to achieve universal primary education. The
foundation works to achieve this goal by addressing the needs of students, teachers, school leaders
and the education community. Our programs include infrastructure development, ICT/creative
centres, early childhood care and development centres, teacher capacity building and scholarship
programs. The foundation has a special focus on girls in northern Nigeria. Oando Foundation is also
registered as a 501c3 in the United States and is registered with the UK Charity Commission.
Oando Foundation has adopted 48 schools across 20 states: Adamawa, AkwaIbom, Bauchi, Bayelsa,
Cross River, Ebonyi, Edo, Enugu, FCT Abuja, Kaduna, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Niger, Ogun, Ondo,
Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, and Taraba States.
ABOUT BRITISH COUNCIL:
The British Council is the UKs international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural
relations. We create international opportunities for the people of the UK and other countries and
build trust between them worldwide. We work in more than 100 countries and our 7000 staff
including 2000 teachers work with thousands of professionals and policy makers and millions of
young people every year by teaching English, sharing the Arts and delivering education and society
programmes.
We are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter. A core publically-funded grant provides less than 25
per cent of our turnover which last year was 781m. The rest of our revenues are earned from

services which customers around the world pay for, through education and development contracts
and from partnerships with public and private organisations. All our work is in pursuit of our
charitable purpose and supports prosperity and security for the UK and globally.
ABOUT THE CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the
Clinton Foundation, convenes global leaders to create and implement solutions to the worlds 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.
CGI also convenes CGI America, a meeting focused on collaborative solutions to economic recovery
in the United States, and CGI University (CGI U), which brings together undergraduate and
graduate students to address pressing challenges in their community or around the world. For more
information, visit clintonglobalinitiative.org and follow us on Twitter @ClintonGlobal and Facebook
at facebook.com/clintonglobalinitiative.

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