By TIOL News Service

NEW YORK, OCT 13, 2013: MARKING International Day of the Girl Child, senior United Nations officials have highlighted the power of innovation to get more girls in classrooms and improve the quality of learning for all children.

"To achieve meaningful results, we need fresh solutions to girls’ education challenges and we must heed the voices of young people,"Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message for the International Day.

An estimated 31 million primary school aged girls currently miss out on school, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) which is leading the UN system’s activities marking the Day.

"Empowering girls, ensuring their human rights and addressing the discrimination and violence they face are essential to progress for the whole human family,"Mr. Ban noted.

The International Day of the Girl Child was designated as 11 October by a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2011, to recognize girls’ rights and highlight the unique challenges girls face worldwide. This year focuses on "innovating for girls’ education."

Innovation ranges from improving means of transportation for girls to get to school to corporate mentorship programmes to help them acquire critical work and leadership skills and facilitate their transition from school to work, to deploying mobile technology for teaching and learning to reach girls in remote areas.

"Education can transform the lives of girls and strengthen their communities,"said Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director. "Innovation can help us reach every girl by transforming education.”

In Bangladesh, innovative solar-powered floating schools help ensure uninterrupted learning for children living in communities affected by floods and rising sea water.

Meanwhile, in Uganda, girls at some schools have access to a solar-powered Digital Drum, a rugged computer kiosk built into an oil drum and pre-loaded with dynamic multimedia content on health, job training, education opportunities, and other services.

While in South Africa, for example, the TechnoGirls partnership among UNICEF, the Government, and over 100 private sector companies, aims to connect 10,000 adolescent girls with mentors from the tech sector to boost their skills and job readiness in non-traditional jobs, such as water pipe engineering.

"Innovation is giving us powerful new tools to reach and teach more girls than ever before,"said Mr. Lake. "To help more girls go to school, stay in school, and complete their learning, we need to keep learning ourselves, using these new tools, generating new ideas, and scaling up the most promising innovations."

Empowerment and education of girls is part of the eight anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which the international community aims to reach by the 2015 deadline, as it prepares a new set of global development goals for the post-2015 period.

In addition, education is also a priority for Mr. Ban who last year launched the Global Education First Initiative. Hosted by the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Initiative aims to put every child in school, improve the quality of learning, and foster global citizenship.