Peace Corps

• Subject(s): Language Arts & Literature, Environment & Health, Cross-Cultural Understanding
• Grade Level(s): 6–8, 9–12

Overview

Enhance the experiences from the educating village girls challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with lesson plans and additional resources from World Wise Schools.

Background Information

Factoids from the Game:

• In every region of the world, there are primary school-aged girls who do not attend school. As of 2005, the percentages ranged from 17 percent to 69 percent of eligible girls who were not receiving an education. Source: UNESCO
• Getting girls into school and ensuring that they stay and learn has what UNICEF calls a "multiplier effect." Educated girls are likely to marry later and have fewer children, who in turn will be more likely to survive and be better nourished and educated. Educated girls are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, and more able to participate in social, economic and political decision-making. Source: UNICEF
• One of the Millennium Development Goals is to ensure gender parity in universal primary education by the year 2015. Between 1990 and 2004, an increase of 9 percent more girls worldwide were completing primary school. Source: World Bank

Materials

• Story: Managing Water (Madagascar)
• Story: Cote d'Ivoire
• Podcast: Think About Water
• Podcast: Reasons for Joy

Procedures

Play the educating village girls challenge.

Watch the slide show Healthy Girls, Healthy Villages. Enjoy vivid scenes of Nigerienne girls and women as they work and live in their village, learn about health and nutrition, and play American games during Peace Corps Volunteer Vivian Nguyen's Girls Leading Our World Camp.

Lesson Plans

• The Flow of Women's Work (Grades 6-8)
  Students compare the division of labor in water-related work in rural Lesotho with their own households.

• Beyond the Classroom: Empowering Girls
• In the Classroom: Empowering Girls
• The Exchange Newsletter (women in development and gender and development)
• Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World)

• UNICEF:
  Voices of Youth: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
• United Nations Cyber School Bus:
  Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
• United Nations Cyber School Bus:
  Achieve Universal Primary Education

Framework and Standards

Standards

National Content Standards:

• English Language Arts Standards
  • Standard 1
• Social Studies:
  • Theme I: Culture and Cultural Diversity
  • Theme III : People, Places, and Environments
  • Theme IX: Global Connections