What does education for girls have to do with the welfare of chimpanzees you might ask. If families do not have enough money to send their children to school these children will not be able to learn about environmental issues and how to preserve the forests in which the chimpanzees live. Some families might have some money and will then decide to send one child to school. Very rarely will this be a girl if she has a brother. This often leads to something fascinating when and if these girls get a chance to learn: they thrive, they learn with extra ambition, and empathize with those who have little chance of survival.

The Jane Goodall Institute helps the communities surrounding the projects:

“JGI’s Girl’s Scholarship Project

In many rural communities throughout Africa, girls must take a back seat to boys when it comes to education.

Due to limited economic resources, families often have to choose which of their children are sent to school and who will stay to help the household. In the vast majority of these cases, boys are selected to attend school while girls end up remaining in the home. Many of these girls are encouraged to marry early and start a family, further decreasing their chances of getting an education.

To address this issue, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) launched our Girl’s Scholarship Project in 1998 to provide girls and young women with the resources they need to attend school. This project is aimed at decreasing the disparity of education levels between males and females in the Kigoma community of western Tanzania.

The girls who receive scholarships from JGI are all part of JGI’s Roots & Shoots program, the Institute’s global youth environmental and humanitarian program. In addition to helping these girls attend school, JGI also trains their families on sustainable farming techniques and what they can do to preserve the forests around them.”

You can read more at

http://www.janegoodall.org/programs/girls-scholarship-project