Michelle Obama goes to Africa to promote girls’ education
Girls' education
Michelle Obama speaks on International Women’s Day in March, also marking the first anniversary of Let Girls Learn
United States First Lady Michelle Obama travelled to Africa yesterday with daughters Sasha and Malia and her mother as part of an effort to promote girls’ education, her office said.
The six-day trip will include visits to Moroccoand Liberia. She will also visit Spain. The trip will highlightthe work of , a US government initiativelaunched by President Barack Obama and the first lady in2015.
That project is part of “a US government effort to addressthe barriers that keep over 62 million girls around the worldout of school, particularly adolescent girls,” the first lady’schief of staff, Tina Tchen, told reporters on a conference call.
Michelle Obama will be joined by actresses Meryl Streep andFreida Pinto in Morocco, where they will talk to adolescentgirls on the challenges they face in getting an education, her
office said.
In Liberia, she will visit a US Peace Corps trainingfacility and a school along with Liberian President EllenJohansson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female elected head of stateand a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Michelle Obama’s interest in education for young girls washeightened after militant Islamist group Boko Haram seized 276girls from their school in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, in April2014. She highlighted their plight through the Twitter hashtag,#BringBackOurGirls.
“This is a unique trip in the sense that the first lady isgoing to three different regions that are important to theUnited States – Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and Europe,” BenRhodes, assistant to the president, told reporters on the samecall.
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