Opinion
Education Opinion

Michelle Obama Announces U.K. Partnership to Support Girls’ Education

By Matthew Lynch — June 22, 2015 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

On a trip to the United Kingdom last week, First Lady Michelle Obama revealed that the United States and the U.K. will form a partnership “to improve girls’ access to education around the world.”

By way of CNN.com, the partnership will included $200 million in funding that will “support adolescent girls’ education.”

What’s even better is that some of the money will target areas impacted by war and domestic crisis situations, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That area, according to CNN.com, will “receive $180 million over five years, benefiting “more than 755,000 girls aged 10 to 18.""

The trip is part of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) “Let Girls Learn initiative” “that will leverage the investments we have made and success we have achieved in global primary school, and expand them to help adolescent girls complete their education” according to the White House’s website.

In addition to expanding the USAID’s work, Obama will work with the Peace Corps to expand the initiative’s reach by connecting “volunteers with members of the public and private sector to fund small, community-initiated, sustainable, grassroots projects.”

While we often gripe about the state of education in America, like K-12 funding, student loan debt, or the viability of charter schools, education in developing countries and war-torn nations is obviously much worse than here in America.

Aiding those students, specifically girls, will contribute to the health and viability of their future, their long-term health, and those country’s economies.

The opinions expressed in Education Futures: Emerging Trends in K-12 are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.