Education

From a safe house helping girls escape FGM, to Girls’ Rooms that provide a safe space for girls to manage their periods, keeping girls in school is at the heart of our work.  Thank you to the players of People’s Postcode Lottery who have helped to make this vital work possible.

Mukuru slum in Nairobi, Kenya is home to over half a million people - many of whom live in extreme poverty. Low wages, insecure employment, limited education opportunities and poor sanitation are just some of the challenges facing local communities. Through our Not This Girl appeal, ActionAid is working with local women's groups to help prevent girls being abused and enable them to stay in school. All donations to the appeal before 7 June will be matched by the UK government as part of UK Aid Match. Find out what life is like for girls growing up in the Mukuru slum, and how you can help change their lives for good. 

Long-term ActionAid supporter and Britain's Got Talent judge Alesha Dixon recently joined us in Ghana to meet young girls at risk of child marriage. Watch this short film of her trip and read her personal account below. 

Having your period at a festival can be a bit of a nightmare, when clean loos and sanitary items are hard to come by. Millions of women and girls around the world face these challenges on a monthly basis – no sanitary products, no proper toilets, no clean water - often causing them to drop out of education.That's why we were at Latitude Festival over the weekend – to bust period taboos and fundraise to help keep girls in school when they have their period. Check out our highlights - in pictures.

The recent news that Kenya’s government will give free sanitary towels are to schoolgirls is a big step towards making sure they don't have to drop out of school when they have their period. It's unfair that millions of girls in the developing world are held back by their periods - so we welcome this move to ensure that all schoolgirls in Kenya have access to sanitary towels and tampons.

Corporate tax avoidance - big companies artificially lowering their tax bills - deprives the world’s poorest countries of the money they need to tackle poverty. With campaigning for the General Election in full swing, tax dodging is shaping up to be a key issue. New ActionAid research has revealed that more than 8 in 10 of people in the UK want to see the next UK government clamp down on tax havens and corporate tax avoidance.