Life skills education for marginalize girls aims at exploring ways to empower poor and out-of-school girls in Indonesia by helping them to acquire appropriate technology-related knowledge skills, which would open the door to more job opportunities and ultimately increase their status in the society. Life skill education for girls become important because data from the Indonesia Ministry of Education shows significant gender gaps in school dropout rates, both at primary school and junior secondary levels. Girls are more likely to drop out of school than boys. In primary school, out of every 10 children who drop out, 6 are girls and 4 are boys. It is the same in junior secondary school. The gender gap slightly widens at the senior secondary school to 7 girls dropping out for every 3 boys
This paper will suggest that promoting gender-equitable technical and vocational education can be a means of combating poverty. While recognizing that the girls and young women in poor societies are a particularly vulnerable group, this paper demonstrates ways in which they can be better equipped with training to seize income earning opportunities, thereby improving their living conditions.
Implementation strategies for this problem include: creating a national movement for completion of basic education, involving communities, especially parents and community leaders, the private and industrial sectors; enhancing and strengthening existing essential programs for increasing school enrolment; using alternative education approaches and programs to reach previously unreached poor and remote communities and improve equity in access to basic education.