In a recent interview with Forbes, First Lady Michelle Obama’s Chief of Staff Tina Tchen answered some questions about Michelle Obama’s efforts to increase the global education of girls and how she hopes those efforts will continue after she leaves.
Obama has been active for the past year and a half overseeing the Let Girls Learn initiative, started in March 2015 to help adolescent girls around the world reach their full potential through access to quality education.
Obama and her staff hope that after she leaves the White House, her efforts to increase access to education for girls are taken up by the next president—whether it be he or she.
"So many of the commitments that we have announced from private sector companies to support girls’ education or water projects in particular areas or work for refugee children and education for adolescent girls who are in refugee camps—those are multi-year commitments,” said Tchen in the interview.
"We think that the strategy we laid out today is a pretty easy roadmap for any future administration to follow and we hope that they will.”
Neither Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton or Republican candidate Donald Trump have thus far addressed how they would take on global education issues such as the under-education of girls. In fact, both candidates have only fleetingly addressed education issues in general.
But Obama’s aid has some words of advice for people who want to make a difference regardless of who is elected into office in just a little over a week.
"Young people are really key,” she said.
"There is so much your generation can do; I think I’m encouraged because there is so much awareness from young boys. Young men in this generation, kind of get it, they want to support causes. We have a good president who writes about being a feminist. Talking to this generation gives us great hope.”
Read the full Forbes interview here.
Nicole Gorman, Senior Education World Contributor
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