How are girls selected for a bursary?

Selection is made with the community rather than for it, using participatory needs assessments that identify out-of-school girls and households under the greatest pressure. Priority goes to girls from single-parent households, displaced families, girls with disabilities and those at risk of early marriage. Criteria are applied openly so that selection is understood and trusted locally.

Does a bursary cover more than school fees?

Yes. Fees alone rarely keep a girl in school. Support extends to books, uniforms and equipment, and is paired with school feeding support, menstrual health supplies and adolescent girls clubs, because the pressures that end a girl's schooling are cumulative rather than single.

Why does menstrual health appear in an education programme?

Because menstrual hygiene management is one of the most significant practical barriers to girls' school attendance in Cameroon. Without facilities and supplies, a girl can miss several days every month, and the accumulated absence eventually makes catching up impossible. Addressing it is one of the most cost-effective ways to keep girls in class.

What happens to a girl who is already married or has a child?

She is not excluded. Re-enrolment campaigns specifically seek out girls whose schooling has already ended, including young mothers, and work with families and schools to negotiate a return. Where formal return is not possible, we connect them to vocational and digital literacy training and to our livelihoods programme.

How do you know the programme is working?

Each pillar has a monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning plan with indicators, baselines and targets. For education we track enrolment, retention and completion, with data disaggregated by sex, age, disability status and location. Quarterly internal reviews and bi-annual external evaluations test whether the numbers reflect real change.

Girl-Child Education & Protection

Cameroon's female literacy rate remains below 70%. We work to get underprivileged girls back into school, and to remove the things that push them out again — cost, distance, safety and shame.

300

Underprivileged girls we aim to re-enrol in our first year

1,000

Girls to be supported to stay in and complete school by year three (target)

5,000

Girls to be supported through to completion by year seven (target)

The challenge

The barriers are rarely about ability

Girls in Cameroon continue to face significant barriers to education, and almost none of them are academic. They are early and forced marriage, domestic responsibilities, school fees, distance to school and unsafe school environments. Girls from rural, impoverished or displaced communities are particularly disadvantaged.

The result is a female literacy rate that remains below 70%, and a pattern in which a girl's schooling ends not through a single decision but through an accumulation of small, practical pressures.

What actually ends a girl's schooling

Fees and materials — where a household must choose, a daughter's schooling is most often the one dropped.
Domestic responsibility, including water collection, which falls heaviest on girls.
Distance, and the safety of the journey itself.
Menstruation, where the absence of facilities and supplies means several days missed every month until catching up becomes impossible.
Early and forced marriage, which ends schooling outright.
Displacement, which severs a girl from her school and her support network at once.

What we do

Eight interventions, targeted at the specific pressures that end a girl's schooling rather than at enrolment alone.

Scholarships and school bursaries

Direct support for fees and associated costs, prioritising girls from single-parent households, displaced families and the poorest communities.

School re-enrolment campaigns

Community-level work to identify out-of-school girls and negotiate their return with families and schools, rather than waiting for them to come forward.

School materials and supplies

Books, uniforms and equipment — among the most commonly cited reasons a family keeps a girl at home.

Safe, girl-friendly learning spaces

Working with schools on the physical and social conditions that make a girl feel safe enough to attend and to stay.

School feeding support

Addressing hunger as a barrier to attendance and to concentration once a girl is in the classroom.

Adolescent girls clubs

Regular, structured groups where girls build confidence, discuss their rights, and find peers and mentors — and where problems surface early.

Menstrual health education and supplies

Menstrual hygiene management is a major barrier to attendance. We combine education, supplies and school facilities so that menstruation does not cost a girl a week of every month.

Mentorship by successful women

Connecting girls with Cameroonian women who have completed their education and built careers, so that the path is visible and not theoretical.

Who we serve

Who this programme is for

We prioritise the girls whose education is most at risk and who are least likely to be reached by mainstream provision.

Out-of-school girls
Underprivileged girls aged 6 to 18
Girls from single-parent and child-headed households
Girls with disabilities
Displaced girls and girls in host communities
Girls in rural and remote communities where the journey to school is long or unsafe
Adolescent girls at risk of early or forced marriage

How we work

Education programming brings adults into sustained contact with children, so safeguarding is not an add-on to this work — it is a precondition for it. Every member of staff and every volunteer is briefed before they work with children, and our child protection commitments apply to partners as well.

Convention on the Rights of the Child
Child protection policy
PSEA — mandatory for all staff, volunteers and partners
Do No Harm
Core Humanitarian Standard
CEDAW
SDG 4 — Quality Education

What we are working towards

Targets drawn from our organisational framework, with the horizon against which we will report progress.

Year 1 Enrol at least 300 underprivileged girls back into school through bursaries and provision of school materials.
Years 2–3 Support at least 1,000 girls to remain in and complete school through sustained bursary programmes.
Years 2–3 Extend programming to at least five additional communities.
Years 4–7 Support 5,000 girls through primary and secondary education completion with bursaries and mentorship.
Years 4–7 Influence national policy on girl-child education through evidence-based advocacy.

Put a girl back in the classroom

A bursary, a set of books, a year of school materials. These are small amounts of money that decide whether a girl finishes her education.

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