The number of children not in school in Nigeria is claimed to be between 18.5 to 20 million, and 2 out of every 3 out-of-school children in Nigeria is a girl, making up 62% of the number of out-of-school children. This reality is partly a product of the civil unrest and crisis plaguing North East Nigeria, resulting in over 2.8 children out of school. As a result, 2.8 million children in the area are in need of education, with 75 percent of children in IDP camps not attending school. This educational crisis can no longer be dismissed or overlooked, in light of the rising poverty, insecurity, health decline and malnutrition.

To address this crisis, Stand With A Girl (SWAG) Initiative created the Stand With A Girl Education Project, a project that intends to increase the number of Internally Displaced girls in school by 1000 in three (3) years, as well as push for community ownership of the necessity for girl child education through advocacy. The premise upon which the project is built is that to solve the educational crisis, we have to start with ‘one village, one school and one girl at a time’, in the hopes that this would translate to informed decision making and invariably, a reduction in child marriage, poverty and maternal and child mortality as well as national development.