Kenya

Risk to Girls’ education and safety during COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about widespread lockdowns and school closures around the world, including in Kenya, where more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed.  In a country where 1.2 million primary-school-age children were already out of school before the crisis hit, these closures have…

Introducing the new INEE Guidance Note on Gender by Nora Fyles & Dean Brooks This blog post was originally published by the Global Partnership for Education. As civil war engulfed her home country Somalia, eight-year-old Fatuma fled with her family to Dadaab, Kenya, site of one of the world’s largest refugee camps. With the support…

One of the most important innovations in anti-poverty policy in the last couple of decades has been the scale-up of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs. A typical CCT will transfer cash to a poor household conditional on children attending school and receiving health check-ups regularly. While CCTs have often been promoted as an effective means…

From July 2019 to September 2019, World University Service of Canada (WUSC) was contracted by Mastercard Foundation to conduct research into bridging initiatives and programs that support displaced youth, including refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), in sub-Saharan Africa to access higher education and employment upon graduation. This mapping study, A Bridge to the Future:…

The Humanitarian Education Accelerator (HEA) is an innovative, multi-donor fund that invests in research to help improve our collective understanding of how pilot projects can be transformed into scalable educational initiatives for refugees and displaced communities worldwide. The HEA is funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, UNHCR, and UNICEF. Our Education Advisor, Stephanie…

Gender Lens Investing in Ghana, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam What is Gender Lens Investing? Pioneered by the Criterion Institute, a think tank based in the United States, and taken up and adapted by an increasing variety of actors over the past decade, Gender lens investing (GLI) is defined as “the incorporation of a gender…

The unprecedented global displacement crisis is only getting worse Every day, on the news, we hear about tragic stories of people whose lives have been forever altered due to conflicts and crises in their home country. The frequency of this news could make us immune to the seriousness of the situation. On this World Refugee Day,…

Evidence and Lessons Learned from our Programming in Kenya A recent study by UNHCR on education for refugees reports that fewer than one in four refugee adolescents are currently enrolled in secondary school. Though hard to imagine, the situation is even worse in low-income countries, where the majority of refugees live and where fewer than…

Refugee girls face overwhelming barriers to accessing quality education. Beyond realities that affect many young women, such as early and forced marriage, early pregnancy, an unfair burden of domestic chores, and family financial constraints, refugee girls face further, unique challenges. With limited mobility and very few options for employment, refugee girls have limited incentives to…

Reflections from the First Annual WEE Global Learning Forum By: Ariane Ryan, Technical Advisor for Inclusive Economies, WUSC I recently had the privilege of attending the first annual Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Global Learning Forum on behalf of WUSC. Hosted in Bangkok, Thailand, the event brought together leading stakeholders in the field of women’s economic empowerment to…