St.Wolstan’s Community SchoolCailíní Saor

Empower GirlsEducation 4 All

Introduction• Our three NGOs have decided to work together as one

group in order to tackle this issue more effectively.• We chose to raise awareness on the issue of Gender

Inequality in Education.• We chose this because we felt that a lot of people take

their education for granted. We wanted to highlight the fact that not everyone has the chance to take education for granted.

• We realised that educating girls breaks the cycle of poverty which has a huge impact on their families.

• Our focus is on girls as we found that so much more girls are out of education compared to boys.

The Blogs• After the research we began our campaign as NGOs and felt

a blog was necessary to raise awareness of our issue.• All of the NGOs have three separate blogs; Cailíní Saor, Empower Girls and Education 4 All.• Each NGO set upon setting up, designing and regularly

posting on each of the blogs.• All of the blogs have been very successful to date reaching

up to thousands of views from countries all over the world.• As well as raising awareness which, of course, was our main

aim for the blog we also feel as though we now have a record of all we have done throughout our NGO campaigns.

Research• We all started off our

project this year with researching different world issues Poverty, Injustice and Inequality.

• We decided that we wanted to focus on Gender Inequality in Education.

• After deciding this, we researched more on this topic and saw shocking statistics such as the fact 66 million girls are out of education.

• While further researching we also found the documentary ‘Girl Rising’ which we immediately knew would be help to us in our campaign.

Guest Speaker• We organised for Mary Hanlon a representative from Plan Ireland

to come in to talk to us about development education and about her work with Plan Ireland.

• The first thing we did was split into groups to read about a competition that was being held in Sierra Leone that offered a university scholarship to girls who kept their virginity until the age of twenty-one.

• We spent some time debating both the advantages and the disadvantages of this offer, we had different opinions in our year group and both sides had valid and strong points.

• We watched a movie called 13, and A Bride, that further inspired us to fight for equal rights for all genders.

Petition ‘The World Petition’

• Number of Signatures currently: 107• The petition is to fight for girl’s rights world wide for an

education as 66 million girls in the world are out of education and there are 33 million fewer girls than boys in primary school.

• We got students in our school to sign it, parents, friends and teachers to show their support to this pressing issue.

• We thought this was a great way to raise even more awareness and it gives us a bigger voice on the issue.

Letters to our local TD’s

• We wrote a letter to Mr. Eamon Gilmore, Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade and Ms. Frances Fitzgerald, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, outlining why we believe giving girl’s the right to an education is a very important issue and one they should definitely help us on our goal to give all girls the right and chance at an education by setting up goals for our government to make on this issue.

AWARENESS WEEK!• In school, we decided to hold an awareness week to

raise awareness about such an important issue, especially as we are an all-girls school.

• We made posters with lots of striking stating facts like:

66 million girls are without education

14 million girls under 18 will be married this year

Girl Rising• We found the links to clips of Girl

Rising• We tweeted Intel asking for a copy of

the movie• This movie is a collection of stories

from girls all over the world following their struggle for education

• Viewers get to know nine girls living in the developing world

• We also held a showing of Girl Rising for each year group on each day of the week

• We handed out tickets in advance to make it like a cinema.

• We gave out sweets and popcorn also and there was great interest taken in this and all showings were full!

HIGHLIGHTS AND CHALLENGES• Highlight 1

• 2

• 3

• Challenge 1

• 2

• 3

FINAL MESSAGE