2019 UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education
Sulá Batsú, Costa Rica
Founded in 2005, Sulá Batsú is a Costa Rican cooperative using digital technologies, art and culture to tell the stories of girls and young women and foster social transformation in local communities.
The awarded project, Voices of Central American Girls empowers adolescent girls through digital skills to raise their own voices and create solutions for themselves and their communities. Implemented in schools, the project provides girls from vulnerable backgrounds with extracurricular training combining digital literacy, coaching, mutual learning and prototyping innovative digital solutions.
Since 2016, over 4,000 girls have enrolled in the trainings, a network of more than 600 girls has been established and 300 technological prototypes have been developed. The project was originally developed in Costa Rica and has since been extended through much of the Central America region.
Department of Education, Government of Navarre, Spain
The Department of Education of the Government of Navarre in Spain is recognized for its project, SKOLAE: Growing in equality which addresses gender stereotypes in education and beyond. This holistic school programme empowers learners to choose their course in life in conditions of equality, working on the principle that meaningful change begins in the classroom.
The project’s training programme enables learners to identify inequalities, fight them and exercise their individual right to equality regardless of culture, religion, sexual orientation or identity. It aims to prevent all forms of violence against girls and women, bring forward women and their contributions and value egalitarian masculinities and empowered femininities.
Since 2017, the project has been implemented in 116 schools (30% of the region’s schools) and has had an impact on 8,705 girls and 8,902 boys aged 3 to 18. Some 1,808 female and 495 male teachers have taken part in the project’s teacher training programme.