The Global Fund supports broad and equal access to education as an essential strategy towards building healthy families, communities and economies. Over the last five years, the Global Fund has awarded 196 grants totaling more than $2.4 million to women’s groups supporting girls’ and women’s education programs like these:

Grantee: Burundi Association of University Women (BAUW)

Location: Bujumbura, Burundi

Situation: The ethnic cleansing which broke out in October 1993 in Burundi led to the deaths of about 500,000 people and the displacement of thousands of others across the borders of neighboring Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo. As the nation is consumed by efforts of reconciliation, extreme hunger and famine force young women to engage in sex work and drop out of school.

Program: BAUW focuses on financing the cost of schooling activities for girls and young women. Recently, the group purchased school materials for 200 internally displaced girls and produced a career development manual for young women. In order to foster ethnic reconciliation, buaw began a talent competition in fifteen schools in areas notorious for violence.

Total GFW Grants: $9,100

Grantee: Belgrade Women’s Studies and Research Center (BWSC)

Location: Belgrade, Serbia

Situation: Historically, gender and women’s studies programs have been nearly absent in Southeastern Europe. Serbian education systems traditionally prioritize scientific fields and disregard any linkages between the studies of science, culture, and identity.

Program: BWSC collaborates closely with activists, institutions, and academics to introduce ideas of gender, ethnicity, and class to the Serbian education system. The group offers a gender studies program for multiple audiences to sensitize them about gender, and conducts seminars, when requested, about gender issues for ngos and other groups. Additionally, it has helped to establish the Regional Network of Gender/Women’s Studies in Southeastern Europe, which is a collection of regional women’s and gender studies groups and institutions.

Total GFW Grants: $68,000

Grantee: Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL)

Location: Kabul, Afghanistan

Situation: Decades of war and instability have robbed women and children of education.

Program: To empower women with the tools to act as agents for social change, AIL provides a rights-based approach to education, health and religious interpretations of Islam. AIL provides both male and female teachers with training in pedagogy and human rights, and reaches 350,000 children annually through their education programs.

Total GFW Grants: $261,301