GIRLS-2019/10/15 1 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION GIRLS’ EDUCATION RESEARCH AND POLICY SYMPOSIUM: LEARNING ACROSS A LIFETIME Washington, D.C. Tuesday, October 15, 2019 Opening Remarks and Panel: MODERATOR: CHRISTINA KWAUK Fellow, Center for Universal Education The Brookings Institution BHAGYASHRI DENGLE Regional Director, Asia Plan International HUGO GORST-WILLIAMS Team Leader, Girls’ Education UK DFID ROBERT JENKINS Chief, Education Associate Director, Programme Division, UNICEF LEANNA MARR Director, Office of Education USAID MARTHA MUHWEZI Executive Director, FAWE Africa Intervening Early: Bringing Gender Into Early Childhood Education: MODERATOR: DANA SCHMIDT Senior Program Officer Echidna Giving PRESENTER: SAMYUKTA SUBRAMANIAN 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution VRINDA DATTA Director of the Centre for Early Childhood Education Development Ambedkar University, Delhi ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 GIRLS-2019/10/15 2 SUMAN SACHDEVA 2015 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution Empowerment at Adolescence: STEM Skills for Girls’ Leadership and Innovation: MODERATOR: SARAH GAMMAGE Director of Gender, Economic Empowerment, and Livelihoods ICRW NASRIN SIDDIQA 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution MALIHA KHAN Chief Programs Officer Malala Fund MEIGHAN STONE Senior Fellow, Women and Foreign Policy Program Council on Foreign Relations Entering Adulthood: Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Girls’ Transitions to Work: MODERATOR: KEVIN CASSIDY Director and Representative to Bretton Woods and Multilateral Organizations International Labour Organization PRESENTER: ANIL PAUDEL 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution RAMHARI LAMICHHANE Director General Colombo Plan Staff College NANCY TAGGART Senior Youth and Workforce Advisor USAID Breakout 1 - Bridging Policy and Practice: Lessons From Early Childhood Education Program Implementers: MODERATOR: DANA SCHMIDT Senior Program Officer Echidna Giving KIM FOULDS Senior Director of International Research & Evaluation Sesame Workshop ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 GIRLS-2019/10/15 3 PARTICIPANTS (CONT’D): JOAN LOMBARDI Director, Early Opportunities SAMYUKTA SUBRAMANIAN 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution Breakout 2 - Bridging Policy and Practice: Skilling Girls’ for Better Life Outcomes Through STEM: MODERATOR: SARAH GAMMAGE Director of Gender, Economic Empowerment, and Livelihoods ICRW KARA McBRIDE Senior Education Specialist World Learning MASRURA OISHI Manager, Innovation Ecosystem and Partnerships BRAC NASRIN SIDDIQA 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution Breakout 3 - Bridging Policy and Practice: Gender-Transformative TVET to Increase Women’s Workforce Participation: MODERATOR: KEVIN CASSIDY Director and Representative to Bretton Woods and Multilateral Organizations International Labor Organization MARIA BRINDLMAYER Senior Knowledge Management Specialist Making Cents MARTHA MUHWEZI Executive Director FAWE Africa PRESENTER: ANIL PAUDEL 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution Echidna Global Scholars’ Reflections: MODERATOR: CHRISTINA KWAUK Fellow, Center for Universal Education The Brookings Institution ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 GIRLS-2019/10/15 4 ANIL PAUDEL 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution NASRIN SIDDIQA 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution SAMYUKTA SUBRAMANIAN 2019 Echidna Global Scholar The Brookings Institution * * * * * ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 GIRLS-2019/10/15 5 P R O C E E D I N G S MS. KWAUK: Good morning, everyone. If everyone can start to take their seats. Can you all hear me? Good morning, everyone. My name is Kristina Kwauk and I am a Fellow here at the Center for Universal Education here at Brookings. And on behalf of Rebecca Winthrop and Emiliana Vegas, our co-directors, I wanted to welcome you all here today to our annual girls' research and policy symposium. So great to see familiar faces and some new friends in the room, as always. So today we're launching the reports of our ninth cohort of Echidna Global Scholars, whom I will introduce to you all throughout the day. And for those of you who aren't familiar, the Echidna Global Scholars program is a visiting fellows program aimed at amplifying the work of grass roots girls' education leaders from around the world, and to also generate and communicate evidence-based solutions to improving learning opportunities for girls. We have now hosted 31 fellows from 18 countries. And this program would not be possible without the generous support of Echidna Giving. This year the Echidna Scholars research allows us to investigate three critical entry points for improving girls' learning opportunities across her lifetime, which is the theme of this year's symposium. We'll be looking at the early childhood years with Samyukta Subramanian's research in India, STEM education for adolescent girls with Nasrin Siddiqa from Bangladesh, and finally, girls' transitions to work with Anil Paudel's work on TVET in Nepal. We'll also have the opportunity to engage these entry points throughout the day in discussions at the policy level with our distinguished panelists, who are also joining me this morning here, and also after lunch, as well as some breakout sessions that will get into more of the implementation implications in the afternoon. And importantly, the Echidna Scholars research poses to us a critical question of what it means to reach a little higher in our aspirations and actions when it comes to achieving gender equality in and through education. Each year we try to tackle the question of how do we, as a global community, reach and achieve systems change for girls? And this year we hope to ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 GIRLS-2019/10/15 6 look more critically at what it means to aim for a gender transformative agenda, in which the social norms, the relations of power, and the policy environment that undergird gender unequal relations of power are dismantled and reconstructed anew. So to help kick us off on this day and to hold us accountable to this critical agenda, I am pleased to introduce our first speaker, Robert Jenkins. I won't read his entire bio, you have it in your agenda packet in front of you, but I will say that Rob joins us at the apex of a long career in international development and humanitarian assistance at UNICEF. Rob is now the chief of education at UNICEF, as well as the associate director of UNICEF's program division. So if you will all join me in welcoming Rob to the stage. MR. JENKINS: Good morning. Thank you very much. Let me also just from UNICEF appreciate the invitation. Thank you very much to Christina Kwauk, to Emiliana Vega, and also to Rebecca Winthrop for the kind invitation. I am really excited by the discussions of today. I love the way it's been framed. I'm going to have a few norms that I'm going to present. I only have 10 minutes and I'll stick to that, but let me start by saying I think we should not spend too much time talking about the importance of girls' education. Some of you may be surprised I would start with that, but I figure you've come today to this meeting convinced girls' education is important. And having only been on this job in headquarters for three or four months, I'm amazed at how much time people spend at the global level reassuring themselves that what they do is important. (Laughter) So I think if anyone is not convinced of girls' education, you've come to the wrong meeting. Where I think we do want to spend time is talking about solutions and how to transform systems. And those are heavy lifting words, and I'm going to spend a little bit of time on that. I do want to maybe just take a second and frame this by saying we absolutely have a global learning crisis. And I mean global, I mean within a mile of this building. I come from Canada, definitely very much a learning crisis in Canada, but also in the countries where UNICEF works more intensely. And there's tons of statistics that will prove that we have a learning crisis. And, indeed, we're using that word on purpose. But one of which will be announced more formally ANDERSON COURT REPORTING 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 600 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 GIRLS-2019/10/15 7 in a few days, but the talk about the percentage of 10-year-olds that can read, many of which have probably already heard some of that statistic. We're into more than 70 percent in low- and middle- income countries, 10 years cannot read. And 50 percent in Latin and South American, more than 74 percent in Africa. So we also within that learning crisis to mention we obviously have very real statistics globally about the challenges, particularly for girls. So how do we transform a system that that's in crisis? What I would suggest is we need to do things differently. What we are currently doing is not working. And when I mean "we", I mean all of us involved in education, and that includes parents and children themselves, but also what UNICEF would name the duty bearers, people who have duties to rights holders. And those in this meeting and in the next couple of days are going to focus in on girls. So the duty bearers need to do something different. One tension, at least with in UNICEF, is going to be how much do we spend strengthening systems, and the new UNICEF strategy talks about system strengthening, system strengthening.