ELEVEate

Children in Senegal must have birth certificates in order to take the National Secondary School Entrance Exam which must be passed to attend secondary school. Senegal is a poor nation ranking 166th out of 182 countries on the Human Development Index. A typical Senegalese family lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day. Birth certificates cost 25 U.S. dollars making them finically out of reach for most families. Therefore, many parents defer purchasing birth certificates for their children, especially daughters; so their schooling ends with 6th grade. As a result, only 14% of girls go to secondary school and 70% of women in Senegal are illiterate. This is an international problem, according to Plan International there are 56 million unregistered children in the world. Moreover, those who are unregistered are not citizens, which means they do not have access to state provided health care and are unable to vote. Moreover, because of pressing family needs, which daughters are often asked to help address, many girls have gaps in their education making it difficult to succeed on the national secondary school entrance exam even if they are registered. ELEVEate is dedicated to assisting girls in the developing world to acquire a secondary school education by proving them with birth certificates and other forms of educational support.