Women's Global Education Project

Amy Maglio is the Founder and Executive Director of Women’s Global Education Project (WGEP), an international NGO focusing on girls’ education and gender equality. WGEP subverts traditional top-down, big development approaches by operating on micro-levels within communities to identify girls most marginalized who are not receiving an education and transforms them into drivers of their own futures.

This model was hailed as a “best practice” approach to girls’ education by the UN Girls’ Education Initiative, and Amy helped draft the UN Declaration on Gender Equality. She has been recognized for her leadership by the Obama Foundation, Chicago Foundation for Women, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, International Women Associates and NPR. Prior to founding WGEP, Amy worked as a gender analyst for USAID and as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. Amy holds a master’s degree from American University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Women’s Global Education Project (WGEP) is an award-winning nonprofit committed to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in rural regions of Africa. In rural communities, scores of girls and young women are left behind. They do not have the opportunity to attend school. A lack of education keeps girls from achieving their full potential and contributes to cycles of poverty and underdevelopment. We partner with dynamic local leaders and take a contextualized, comprehensive approach to ensure that the structures preventing girls from attending and succeeding in school are dismantled.

Educating girls is the key to building a more equitable world. When a girl succeeds in school, it creates a “multiplier effect” that positively impacts earning potential, health and future opportunities— not just for herself, but for her entire family, village and community. WGEP’s program model elevates humanity by helping the most hard-to-reach girls as well as their families and countries.

It is an outrage that all girls are not in school. According to UNESCO, there are over 129.2 million girls around the world not in school. COVID-19 has only magnified this statistic, and a recent report by the Malala Fund estimates that as many as 10 million more secondary school-aged girls will not return to school after the crisis has passed.

WGEP works in remote, rural communities where enrollment rates are most severe: only 39% of girls attend secondary school, and fewer than 15% graduate from high school. There are six major factors that contribute to this problem that WGEP works to address: poverty that contributes to an inability to pay school fees, undervaluing of girls’ abilities and potential, familial expectations for girls to help with household chores and farming, poor health education and resources for menstrual heath, early marriage and pregnancy, and female genital mutilation / cutting (FGM/C).

WGEP uplifts marginalized communities through a three-pronged approach to advance gender equality and promote women’s leadership:

• Access & retention in school: Scholarships help girls thrive in school, and include tuition, housing, food, school supplies and menstrual pads. We tutor girls to pass exams, and host health workshops on hygiene, violence prevention, reproductive health and the eradication of FGM/C.
• Skill building: Leadership retreats train high school students on public speaking, conflict resolution and community development. We offer adult women’s literacy classes, bring storybooks to schools without libraries, and train teachers on how to best utilize books. We also host computer classes to help girls prepare for future vocations.
• Community mobilization: After-school clubs for boys and girls help shift attitudes towards girls’ education, and community meetings further advance our goals towards gender equality. Parent workshops help them obtain any resources needed to send their daughters to school, and underline the importance of education on their families’ health and economic opportunities.

We work hand-in-hand with grassroots partners to create program interventions that are responsive to community needs and cultural context—for example, our anti-FGM programming only occurs in Kenya, in a region where 71% of women ages 15-49 have undergone FGM/C. 

WGEP operates in rural communities where the world’s most forgotten girls live. We work in Fatick, Senegal and in Tharaka-Nithi county, Kenya—regions that are 200+ kilometers away from their capital cities. WGEP’s primary beneficiaries are adolescent girls whose stability in school is uncertain. We carefully select girls most in need of support: those from homes with only one parent, no income, or compromised household security.

WGEP improves the educational opportunities of girls in our programs so they can build better lives. Cynthia, a WGEP participant in Kenya, recently wrote and performed a spoken word poem titled “An African Tear,” highlighting the impact that WGEP has had on her life. Girls in our scholarship program have a 99.3% retention rate, compared to average rural retention rates of 72% in Kenya and 50.5% in Senegal.

Additional beneficiaries include family members, boys in primary school, adult women, teachers and community members. WGEP’s programs provide these groups with skills and knowledge on the importance of girls’ education and gender equality.

WGEP’s grassroots leaders identify community needs and solicit feedback from beneficiaries. This allows our project to pivot quickly to respond in crisis situations, as we have done during the COVID-19 pandemic.

My work with WGEP uplifts women and girls in remote, rural regions of Africa who have been traditionally left behind, and gives them the resources, skills and knowledge needed to thrive in school and beyond. Once educated, each girl will elevate humanity as the driver of her own future.

WGEP’s model also shifts community members’ attitudes towards girls’ education and gender equality, corresponding to the “elevating understanding” dimension of The Elevate Prize. 

My project found me! As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal, I witnessed scores of girls and young women who did not have the opportunity to attend school, participate in community life, or have any kind of advancement opportunities. Nowhere was this more evident than in my own host family: my bright, exuberant host sister, Khady, was not attending school despite desperately wanting to learn. She was forced to stay home and help with household chores; sending girls to school was seen as a waste since they were only expected to get married and raise a family. I wanted to help Khady and other girls attend school and make their own life decisions. I was infuriated at her situation, but realized I had to go beyond a moment of outrage and catalyze real change.

I launched WGEP in 2004, working from my dining room table while pregnant with my first child. I partnered with existing community-based organizations to change beliefs and attitudes surrounding girls’ education and gender equality. During our first year, WGEP provided school scholarships to 12 girls in Senegal, and the impact of the program has multiplied every year since.

I was furious my host sister could not go to school, and could not leave my Peace Corps service in Senegal until I helped her enroll in primary school. I found a private boarding school that would accept a nine-year-old, helped her obtain a birth certificate, paid the $250 tuition fee, and extended my Peace Corps service one year to ensure that she had the resources she needed to succeed. When I visited Senegal years later, education had transformed Khady’s world, she showed me how she could read and write and her confidence had soared!

I want every girl to have the opportunities that Khady has—and my Peace Corps service underscored the need to invest in remote, rural regions where no other NGOs operate. So many girls I knew personally were in that situation and when I came back from the Peace Corps and learned the worldwide scale of the problem, I decided to start WGEP to help more girls get the education and training they need to build better lives. Education is a human right, and all girls should have the right to control their own destiny. 

Over the past 16 years, WGEP has grown from a volunteer operation at my dining room table to a team of 4 nonprofit leaders in the U.S., 6 grassroots leaders in Senegal and 5 grassroots leaders in Kenya. We have revised and adapted our program model to maximize our impact, and are making real change in rural communities where it is difficult for women and girls to get ahead. As a team, we have over 110 years’ combined experience in sustainable, international development and women’s empowerment. Our program partners in Senegal and Kenya live and work in the communities that we serve, making them uniquely qualified to collaborate with local governments, and to earn trust from families and community members.

WGEP has gained positive recognition in recent years through strategic partnerships with a combination of nonprofit, corporate, and government organizations, including the Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, USAID, U.S. State Department, Johnson & Johnson, and B Corps like World Centric. I have also been recognized for my work and leadership as a “Woman Extraordinaire,” by International Women Associates, and was awarded an honorary diploma by the Senegal Ministry of Education in 2016. These partnerships and awards have provided critical resources and media exposure, and we are now well-positioned to scale.

Several years ago, I encountered a difficult situation with a trusted program director working with our team in Senegal. As our project grew, the director began undermining program goals and did not prioritize the needs of the community—a situation that could have led to the demise of our Senegal program in the Fatick region. As WGEP’s leader, I had to separate our program from this individual, as well as reimagine the work without her leadership.

I took a risk and reconstituted a new team, bringing on four dynamic, youth dedicated to social change to join our project. These new, young staff members (all in their twenties) are motivated to make a difference in the communities where they live and work. It has required more training and guidance to make this team successful, but they have been inspiring to work with and are helping to build a cadre of young leaders in rural Senegal. I am happy to report that our Senegal program has never been stronger, and our new team has been recognized by the girls and community members we serve as well as local government officials as true role models.

As evidenced by the name I chose for my project, I have always had global aspirations for WGEP to scale to reach as many girls and young women as possible. I am passionate about our program’s impact, and have made personal sacrifices to ensure our success: for the first seven years of WGEP, I took no salary, and for three years after that I took a part-time salary. I did not begin receiving a full-time salary until WGEP won a competitive USAID grant in 2013-2017.

Last year, I have made it our priority to launch a capital campaign to prepare WGEP to scale, and to get out of the “scarcity mindset” that stalls many nonprofits’ growth. In September 2019, we launched our “Movement Maker Campaign” to raise $1,000,000 on top of our annual budget—funding that will allow WGEP to invest in monitoring and evaluation tools to attract new grant partners, develop a larger operating reserve, and form new partnerships with grassroots leaders.

I have used my leadership skills to bring WGEP stakeholders on board with this effort. To date, we are on track to reach our $1,000,000 goal by the end of 2021.

WGEP goes beyond performative development to support specific communities. Development cannot be 'one size fits all' any more than a piece of clothing. There are villages where a health initiative will be the most effective way to facilitate meaningful education, and others where you may need a new technology program! When we first enter a community, we don't necessarily know what combination of program interventions will work best there, or why. Our model of development is not a chain, but rather a boutique approach that responds to the unique needs of each village to ensure that girls can attend and thrive in school.

In every village that we work, we know that building a more gender equal world is not a one-sided equation; the responsibility cannot fall on women alone. WGEP’s program model is innovative for our inclusion of boys, parents, and community members.

• Boys in our after-school clubs and leadership retreats are empowered to talk about topics that may be taboo, and therefore become more comfortable with tough questions challenging gender norms, and advocating for their sisters.
• Mothers who participate in WGEP’s adult literacy classes and learn to read can better support their own daughters. Parents in our program understand the positive economic and health implications of girls’ education, and financial support provided to scholars helps poor families rely less on their daughters’ unpaid labor around the house.
• Hosting community activities that entire villages attend helps create goodwill for our program while enforcing positive ideas about girls’ education. 

We focus on girls’ education because of its proven ability to empower women and uplift impoverished villages. We partner with local activists to co-create and implement program activities to ensure that they are community-based and sensitive to community needs. We take a 360-degree approach in order to address the multitude of barriers that exist to girls enrolling and staying in school: we believe that complex problems require multi-faceted solutions.

Our model subverts traditional development practices. I do not pretend to know what is best for communities in rural Africa while sitting at my office in Chicago! We know that the model of development where U.S.-based leaders determine priorities, staff up projects and roll out activities in rural Africa does not work. In order to create sustainable, long-term change, we need to equip local women leaders to succeed.

Identifying and partnering with dynamic, grassroots leaders is essential because many of the reasons for girls’ non-attendance and drop out are social and cultural factors that can only be addressed by communities themselves.

As a result, our programs have resulted in measurable shifts towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. We have seen a shift in attitudes away from FGM/C and we are seeing more families valuing education and literacy, especially for their daughters. 

Aniceta Kiriga, WGEP’s partner in Kenya explains the difference our programs have made in rural Kenya: “Circumstances are better for women and girls because of WGEP. More girls are in school and are performing well. There has also been a change in attitudes regarding girls’ abilities. Girls dream of becoming pilots, doctors and lawyers, and more people now understand that it is one’s dedication and effort that determine their success, rather than their gender.”

In 2020, WGEP will reach 17,081 people: 817 girls with school scholarships, 714 women with adult literacy classes, 964 girls and boys in primary school with after-school clubs, 400 girls with our anti-FGM retreat, and 9,686 children with storybooks. Additionally, we will host community mobilization meetings and workshops for 4,500 parents and community members.

Maintaining our current growth rate, we will serve approximately 17,558 people in 2021. In five years, after the conclusion of our Movement Maker capital campaign and the investment of organizations like The Elevate Prize, we expect to have the resources to scale to reach 50,000 beneficiaries per year through partnerships with 5 dynamic, grassroots organizations.

Within the next year, my primary goal is to raise $1,000,000 on top of WGEP’s annual budget as part of our “Movement Maker” campaign. These funds are critical for three reasons: to invest in monitoring and evaluation tools to prove the strength of our evidence-based model, to expand our program’s reach to help the hardest-to-reach girls access and stay in school, and to support our organization’s sustainability by growing our donor community and operational reserve.

Within the next five years, my vision is for WGEP to be seen as a leader in the NGO sector for our approach to women’s empowerment and girls’ education. I hope to meaningfully increase our investment in our two existing in-country partnerships, as well as use the attached scaling strategy to expand our program through three new partnerships with community-led organizations in Kenya, Senegal, and one other country. Additionally, WGEP has plans to build a state-of-the-art library and computer center for 10,000 community members in Tharaka-Nithi county, opening in 2023.

I hope that girls and women who come in contact with WGEP are continuously inspired to pay it forward and to help others in their communities. We have seen countless examples of WGEP beneficiaries who have returned home to their villages after completing their education as teachers, midwives, and social workers, and who have become passionate advocates for future generations of young women. These stories propel me to continue this work, and will fuel the long-term impact of WGEP.

The past four months have had a huge impact on the world population, as we all work to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. The ongoing pandemic presents economic barriers to reaching our goals. In a year where billions of people are struggling financially, on top of the devastating health consequences of COVID-19, we have temporarily paused on outreach for new donors to contribute to our Movement Maker campaign. Additionally, we have seen many foundations and corporate donors turn inward, and prioritize their current grant partners rather than creating new partnerships.

We believe that with great challenges come great opportunities. There is a huge amount of uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and how long it will influence our fundraising operations. For the current year, we have shifted our focus to maintaining and strengthening our relationships with current grant partners, and applying to any COVID-19 rapid response grant opportunities that align with our relief efforts in Kenya and Senegal.

Applying to unique funding opportunities like The Elevate Prize can further improve our financial situation, and provide our organization with critical funds to reach our Movement Maker campaign goal. The monitoring and evaluation tools we will invest in as part of our capital campaign will attract larger funders who are interested in data-driven philanthropy, and will appeal to corporate partners who may be less likely to invest in lesser known NGOs. Increased investments in marketing and publicity will also support these goals.

We believe that the solutions to elevate humanity on a global scale will not be found in boardrooms in Boston, New York, Washington, or Chicago, but rather in local communities!

WGEP partners with local leaders and grassroots organizations to co-create and implement our programs in Kenya and Senegal. In rural Kenya, our partner civil society organization is Tharaka Women’s Welfare Program (TWWP). We have worked together to promote girls’ education and gender equality in the region since 2007. TWWP’s Executive Director, Aniceta Kiriga, was recognized for her leadership efforts with a Kenya Presidential Award from the National Gender and Equality Commission. 

Stateside, WGEP partners with the Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, Coalition for Adolescent Girls, and the End FGM Network. Through these partnerships, our organization collaborates with others working on women’s empowerment and gender equality, and keeps us up-to-date on advocacy and research in the field. 

As part of our relationship with Girls Opportunity Alliance, I was invited to attend the programs’ launch in 2018 in New York on the Today Show and met former First Lady Michelle Obama! We have also partnered with the Obama Foundation to produce a short powerful documentary film about our work around the issue of FGM/C, entitled Rebecca’s Story. 

WGEP is financially sustainable through a combination of corporate donations, foundations, individual donors, and fundraising events. In 2019, we raised $685,685: 30% from foundations, 40% from individual donors, 1% from corporate partners, and 29% from fundraising events, including our annual fundraising gala and end-of-year giving campaign.

Current and past grant partners include USAID, Girls Opportunity Alliance, Chicago Community Trust, U.S. Department of State, GlobalGiving, Rotary International, World Centric, Manaaki Foundation, International Foundation, American Tower Foundation, Caterpillar Foundation, Neutrogena, IBM, Dining For Women, Johnson & Johnson and KPMG.

$660,470

We have the leadership, technical skills, and trusted in-country relationships to scale our work. We have a solution that works and have had a great impact. There is potential for more impact, more girls reached and more targeted resources going toward girls who have traditionally been left behind. We are seeking further financial investments to have greater impact at scale.

In the social impact sector, organizations with budgets between $500K - $2MM often have a more challenging time attracting new funding, because the largest charitable organizations give to “big name” nonprofits, and smaller foundations try to maximize their impact by giving to very small organizations. COVID-19 has only magnified this dynamic. The Elevate Prize will help our organization reach major, financial milestones and amplify awareness of our organization as a leader in the girls’ education and sustainable, international development sector. By expanding our work, the Elevate Prize has a huge potential to increase our financial contributions from corporate partners, which currently accounts for only 1% of our annual budget.

I am excited about The Elevate Prize’s vision to amplify our program model, and to share the stories of thousands of resilient young women who have participated in our programs, and are now using their education to advocate for transformational change in their own communities.

WGEP has a very lean team in the U.S., with two full-time and two part-time personnel. The Elevate Prize’s prestigious network of partners will enable our organization to attract new funders and build relationships with impactful foundations and corporate partners that we could not reach on our own accord, as well as connect us with mentors to advise project growth and structure.

Additionally, our involvement with the Girls Opportunity Alliance has shown us the importance of marketing and media. We hope to leverage the exposure we will gain from the Elevate Prize to appear in well-regarded news organizations like TEDx and Stanford Social Innovation Review to further grow our support and donor community, and to inspire other change makers to build community-led, partner-driven solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.  

I was recently contacted by Mothers2Mothers (m2m), a highly effective organization working to support women living with HIV and providing health resources to communities across Africa, to explore the idea of partnering together. I have been in conversation with m2m’s co-founder, Robin Allinson Smalley, about the potential to integrate WGEP’s girls’ education model into m2m’s adolescent programming in Uganda and South Africa.

Additionally, I would like WGEP to form consortiums with other small, partner-driven organizations working on girls’ education to share knowledge and apply for joint funding opportunities from impact-focused funders, particularly corporate partners interested in international development.