From Thomson Reuters Foundation

The founder of a UK charity which has helped educate more than one million girls in Africa has won the fourth annual WISE prize for taking education to the world’s marginalized communities.

Social entrepreneur Ann Cotton set up the non-profit organization Camfed – the Campaign for Female Education – about 21 years ago after a trip to Zimbabwe revealed the biggest hurdle to girls receiving an education was poverty.

Camfed funds school fees, supplies and uniforms for girls in sub-Saharan Africa where many 12-year-old girls are forced to quit school as their families cannot afford to educate them. So far Camfed said it has directly supported 1.2 million girls.

Camfed’s programmes are owned and run by communities and implemented in 5,085 schools in 115 rural districts in Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Read more at Thomson Reuters Foundation | Reporting, Editing by Rose Harvey & Belinda Goldsmith