South Africa's new promise: no girl's schooling ends with a pregnancy

In South Africa, 132,000 girls between 10 and 19 fell pregnant in a single year — and one in three never returns to school. This week the country launched the Education Plus Initiative to change that arithmetic: a national drive, backed by UN agencies, guaranteeing adolescent girls secondary education, health services, protection from gender-based violence, and a path from school to work. Deputy Minister of Education Regina Mhaule stood as its political champion, and young people themselves took the microphone at the launch. The stakes are stark — more than 150 girls aged 15 to 24 contract HIV every day in South Africa — but so is the ambition: every girl finishing school, in a violence-free classroom.