Changing Lives
16
Educating the future
"If you educate a woman, you educate
a family, if you educate a girl, you
educate the future."
— Queen Rania of Jordan.
The female literacy rate in South Asia and
Sub-Saharan Africa is as low as 57% and
52%. The local governments in these regions
are aware that educating females is necessary
for creating an egalitarian society. Hence, to
enhance female literacy rate, governments
have started various initiative like giving
stipends and providing mid day meals to
13
girls who attend school.
Mobile money can catalyze various government
initiatives to improve female literacy.
Mobile money can be used in disbursing
government stipends which is a big
motivation for parents to send their daughters
to school. NGOs can now disburse funds
directly to parent's mobile money account
which allows them to buy school uniform,
stationary and books for their daughters.
Parents or students can use the platform to
pay for school fee, university fee or examination fee without having to travel to the
educational institution. Similarly, university
students can access lectures and books
from international faculty and authors online
and pay via mobile money. Students can also
crowd source fund for their projects using
mobile money. The possibilities are endless.
User Story: Pakistan
Telenor Pakistan under the Sindh Education Reform Program (SERP) is disbursing
education stipends to female student via EasyPaisa mobile money service. The
aim of SERP program is to improve literacy rate amongst girls belonging to BOP
families in rural area. The program was started in June 2014 in 23 remote
districts of the Sindh province, with 425,000 students receiving stipends.