This booklet focuses on educating girls and women. The main issues include gender gap and its persistence in education. The reasons for this persistence include poverty, distance of schools, non-availability of gender segregated schools, absence of female teachers, inflexible school timing, and irrelevant and gender-insensitive curriculum. It is not sufficiently recognized that educating girls is one of the wisest investments for a society as it tends to lower population growth to improve education, health and nutritional status of the entire family besides opening up opportunities for supplemental income. Many national action programs already exist which are extending education to girls and women in a cost-effective manner. Some common features among these programs include local recruitment and training, flexible timing, affordability, presence of female teachers, clear targeting of girls, multiple delivery systems, combining learning with income-earning opportunities, and mobilization of community participation. The booklet also includes successful examples of action programs such as BRAC schools in Bangladesh; Mosque schools in Bangladesh, Kenva, Mali, and Pakistan; the Tostan project in Senegal; Cheli Beti in Nepal; the mobile video literacy program in Peru, the literacy and income-earning project in Togo; and the home school project in Pakistan. (JJ)