Girls Education and Womens Empowerment and Livelihood Project

The Girl's Education and Women's Empowerment and Livelihoods Project for the Republic of Zambia will support the Government of Zambia to increase access to livelihood support for women and access to secondary education for disadvantaged adolescent girls in extremely poor households in selected districts. The main beneficiaries of the proposed project will be women aged 19 to 64 years old who are fit for work and adolescent girls aged 14 to 18 years old living in extremely poor households in rural areas. The project consists of three components: component 1, supporting women’s livelihoods; component 2, keeping girls in school; and component 3, institutional strengthening and systems building. The first component supports women’s livelihoods, the second component supports the Keeping Girls in School Initiative, and the third component supports institutional strengthening and system building. The proposed project will not only improve livelihoods and expand access to education through Components 1 and 2 but also aims to improve targeting by building and strengthening systems for implementation. The creation of these systems under this project is expected to further increase the interest of the Government (and external financiers) in investing in livelihood interventions and in covering secondary school fees by channeling funds through the systems that will be set up through this project. Components 1 and 2 will both target extremely poor households, but the categorical targeting used in each component will differ to avoid the same households benefitting from both interventions. Component 1 will target women in households that are not SCTS beneficiaries but are extremely poor and have available labor. Component 2 will target adolescent girls aged 14 to 18 years old in extremely poor households that have high labor dependency ratios and in which the household head is unfit for work. Eligibility for Component 2 will be linked to household enrollment in the SCTS since...