Deep Roots is committed to funding for education for girls, though certainly not exclusively.  We insist that at least 2/3 of scholarship recipients are women.  Women in developing countries and cultures worldwide have not been encouraged to pursue education to the same degree that men have, and it is the education level of the mother that most influences a child's education.

UN Secretary General (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Kofi Annan has mentioned this issue in his book 'We the Peoples': The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century.  Mr. Annan writes, "About 60 per cent of children not in school are girls. Female enrollment in rural areas remains shockingly low. Short-changing girls is not only a matter of gender discrimination; it is bad economics and bad social policy. Experience has shown, over and over again, that investments in girls' education translate directly and quickly into better nutrition for the whole family, better health care, declining fertility, poverty reduction and better overall economic performance. Indeed, world leaders, at United Nations conferences throughout the 1990s, have acknowledged that poverty cannot be overcome without specific, immediate and sustained attention to girls' education."

What Works in Girls' Education By: Barbara Herz, Gene B. Sperling
Council on Foreign Relations Executive Summary  Full Report

Documents (requires Acrobat Reader)
UNESCO Report on Girls Education (September 2003)
World Bank Statistics on Development (April 2003): Africa | Latin America | South Asia

Links
http://www.girlseducation.org/
http://www.unicef.org/girlseducation/
http://genderstats.worldbank.org/