Nairobi, 7th July 2016 – The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) in partnership with the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) will hold an award ceremony at FAWE House, Kilimani, Nairobi on Thursday 7th July. This award ceremony recognizes the top three (3) Most Significant Change stories coming out of a search for innovations which have greatly contributed to advance girls’ participation at secondary education level in Africa. These top stories and others will be used to develop a compendium of best practices on gender equity in education and training programmes.

The “Most Significant Change stories” is a joint competition launched on Thursday, 19th November 2015 in order to map innovative programmes that have advanced girls’ secondary education in the African continent.

Secondary-level education is a critical stage of learning, and female learners are more likely to drop out at this level than their male counterparts. Having gone through secondary education, a girl can choose to delay child bearing or decide to have fewer children with the opportunity to enjoy a better quality of life.

The initiative involved six (6) countries namely Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe with each submitting its own top three stories. A total of 18 stories were reviewed and ranked by the FAWE and ADEA team. They were later submitted to a panel of three (3) judges who were representatives from the Ministry of Education of Burundi and Kenya as well as the UNESCO office in Kenya. Out of these, the top three most innovative stories were selected using the criteria of access, retention and performance. The winners will be awarded at the FAWE offices in Nairobi