In Egypt, traditional gender roles mean many women grow up without access to education. But change is coming. Small schools, established with the help of UNICEF, are opening their doors to both sexes, and young girls like Yusriya are grasping the opportunity to learn with both hands.

Deacon Patrick Moynihan is a missionary in Haiti who runs the Louverture Cleary School, offering a free secondary education to youth in this Port-au-Prince suburb. He believes that the way to rebuild Haiti is through providing education everywhere, no matter how bad the conditions may be.

Haiti faces the enormous challenge of recruiting qualified teachers and providing adequate infrastructure to students. The country has never had a strong tradition of universal public education. Meet the people who are fighting to create a new culture of education.

Teachers in Morocco need basic resources and up-to-date information to face the fifty-five percent illiteracy rate. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, has joined forces with ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, to introduce electronic instruction via satellite technology for eleven thousand teachers.

The Baka indigenous people of Central Africa are oppressed and discriminated against by the Bantu majority. UNICEF and the Catholic Church are seeking to reverse this discrimination by starting at the foundation level: teaching Baka children the skills they need to succeed in school and society.

David Zamora Munoz attends a UNICEF-sponsored child-friendly school in Nicaragua. While many of its defining characteristics are things kids in developed countries take for granted -- gender equality, running water, a friendly atmosphere -- in Nicaragua the school is being seen as a model for the future of the country's education system.

What does it take to educate a girl? Framed by the United Nations global initiative to provide equal access to education for girls by 2015, To Educate a Girl takes a ground-up and visually stunning view of that effort through the eyes of girls in Nepal and Uganda who are out of school, starting school, or fighting against the odds to stay in school.