The Empowering Adolescent Girls to Lead through Education (EAGLE) project aims to equip adolescent girls with the educational, life and leadership skills to become change agents in their communities. FHI 360 will implement a series of multidisciplinary activities that address education, health and gender-based violence, and that engage girls, boys, women and men in examining and altering traditional gender norms.
EAGLE will award scholarships to 3,000 primary school students, called EAGLE scholars, to help improve the transition from primary to secondary school and increase completion rates for lower secondary school. EAGLE scholars will receive financial assistance to help decrease cost barriers to schooling, academic tutoring to enhance educational performance, and mentoring to build health and life skills, including sessions on adolescent reproductive health, HIV and AIDS awareness, and personal self-esteem. The project will also conduct activities in 54 schools, including teacher trainings to improve instructional practices in core subjects and programs to reduce school-related, gender-based violence. The project will link schools with existing community support services in two peri-urban areas of Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.
Activities conducted under EAGLE will build on the work of two other projects implemented by FHI 360 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: the Ambassadors Girls Scholarship Program — which provided scholarship packages, life skills mentoring and community mobilization in support of girls’ education — and the Communication for Change (C-Change) School-Related Gender-Based Violence Prevention pilot, which tested a successful model for making schools safer and changing gender norms that contribute to school-related, gender-based violence.
EAGLE, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, is implemented by FHI 360 in partnership with the International Rescue Committee and Initiatives pour le Developpement Integral.
