Michelle Obama ropes Moroccan girls into her 'Let Girl Learn' campaign

The United States on Tuesday announced the injection of more than $100 million to support programmes for the education of girls in Morocco on the sidelines of a visit of its First Lady, Michelle Obama to Marrakech.

The First Lady is on a tour to promote her “Let Girls Learn” initiative which was launched in March 2015.

The initiative brings together amongst others the Department of State, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Peace Corps.

Michelle Obama said the 62 million girls not being educated around the world impacts her own life all the way from Washington DC “because if we are empowering and providing the skills and the resources to half of our population, then we’re not realising our full potential as a society, as mankind.”

About 100,000 Moroccan students including 50,000 girls will benefit from this investment.

“I think all parents want to see their daughters succeed. They want to see their sons succeed. They want to see opportunity for their children and so it’s a matter of helping them see things differently – that the barriers that they may have grown up with can be worked around, that there are other avenues. And so what we’re doing is working with these young women and working with their parents to help them see what opportunities are,” said Steven Driehause, Director of the U.S. Peace Corps Mission in Morocco.

The USAID, meanwhile, will release a budget of $400,000 for the construction of five new dormitories for girls in the Kingdom of Morocco.

According to official data, more than a third of Morocco’s population of 34 million is illiterate – one of the highest rates in North Africa, and the rate is higher for women at 41 percent,

AFP