Gender disparities also exist in education. While the overall literacy rate for persons with disabilities is 3 percent, UNESCO estimates that it is just 1 percent for women and girls with disabilities.
In Ghana, girls with learning difficulty and disabilities experience multiple discrimination on the grounds of sex and learning challenges and sometimes aggravated by the poor or low socio-economic status of the affected. For example, a girl with learning disabilities who comes from a poor family is unlikely to go to school. Her counterpart from a well to do family might be able to go to school.
The Special Girls Initiative (SGI) is to identify, support and mentor girls with learning difficulties, disabilities and the economic disadvantage in school. The support service includes school fees, stationary, textbooks, uniforms and sometimes school lunch. The programme is currently supporting 10 girls in school.