schoolgirl

A very real, critical - but overlooked - problem led one KwaZulu-Natal mother to design an award-winning out of the box solution. Project Dignity supplies Subz packs to rural and poor schoolgirls across the country, along with an innovative education solution.

A very real, critical – but overlooked – problem led one KwaZulu-Natal mother to design an award-winning out of the box solution. Project Dignity supplies Subz packs to rural and poor schoolgirls across the country, along with an innovative education solution. The project is so successful, it is being expanded to other African countries.

A South African schoolgirl's innovative device for eliminating bacteria on toothbrushes won her rave reviews, a first prize and R17 000 at the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in the US. She was one of five South African prize winners.

Many sub-Saharan African countries are off-track to achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals, but there have been pockets of success: Ghana is set to become the first country in Africa to halve poverty and hunger before 2015, while primary school enrolment in Ethiopia has increased by more than 500% since 1994, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).