WASHINGTON - Seeking to ensure that President and first lady Michelle Obama's signature "Let Girls Learn" initiative lasts long after they leave office, on Tuesday White House officials will outline the strategic reasons for educating young women overseas and unveil a raft of new commitments totaling more than $5 million.

The new pledges from the private sector include $2.5 million from the public health group Rise Up's program to enable girls to finish school and delay early marriage in Malawi; a $1 million donation by Newman's Own Foundation to support both Peace Corps initiatives and the Kibera School for Girls in Kenya; $500,000 from the Central Asia Institute to provide services for girls in Afghanistan; and $400,000 from Endeavor Energy and $200,000 from Water Charity and the National Peace Corps Association to fund Peace Corps volunteers' work.

Taken together with previous funding, Tuesday's announcements mean that in a year and a half, Let Girls Learn has gathered more than $1 billion in support for federal programs to educate girls in 50 nations around the globe.

Tina Tchen, who serves as assistant to the president and the first lady's chief of staff, said in an interview that the program has developed into a "whole of government" operation led by the National Security Council that includes the departments of state, labor and agriculture as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

The initiative has become one of the Obamas' more prominent development programs, in the way that the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief helped define part of the legacy of George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. The program has been the focus of Michelle Obama's overseas trips in recent years, and while visiting East Asia last month President Barack Obama announced that Let Girls Learn will start up in Laos and Nepal.

"They both have spent a lot of time with young people both in the United States and around the world," Tchen said. "They both obviously have a global presence and recognition as leaders that will position them however they choose to move forward on these issues in the post-presidency."

The first lady has leveraged her office, as well as social media and the administration's ties to a range of private groups, to boost public awareness about the program and the estimated 98 million adolescent girls who are denied educational opportunities worldwide.

In January, she spoke to a gathering of the Association of Magazine Media. After that appearance, the administration secured a commitment from 65 magazines to donate advertising space promoting Let Girls Learn.

The first lady promoted the recording of the pop song "This Is for My Girls," featuring rapper Missy Elliot; during a recent episode of "The Late Late Show with James Corden" she belted out the tune during "Carpool Karaoke," with Elliot rapping away in the back seat.

Similarly, CNN trailed Michelle Obama on a trip to Morocco, Liberia and Spain this summer. On Wednesday, the cable network is scheduled to air a documentary about the first lady's trip that explores the story of some of the girls she met there.

Forty-four of the young women Obama met while in Morocco and Liberia have been flown to Washington to participate in activities coinciding with "International Day of the Girl" on Tuesday, as well as a multi-day program arranged by the State Department.

The group includes Raphina Felee, a 20-year-old Liberian who met Michelle Obama during the first lady's visit to Monrovia this summer to promote Let Girls Learn. Felee grew up in a refugee camp in Guinea and now lives with her uncle and his family in Kakata, a town surrounded by rubber plantations in southwestern Liberia. She juggles household chores will attending school.

Felee and a handful of others are featured in the CNN documentary, "We Will Rise: Michelle Obama's Mission to Educate Girls Around the World," which focuses on the challenges facing girls access to education in the developing world. Actors and activists Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto, who joined the first lady on parts of her trip, are also featured in the documentary.

To make the case for maintaining the program under the next administration, the White House will issue an eight-page fact sheet outlining the national security benefits of investing in adolescent girls' education. Aspects of the initiative have attracted some new funding, including $25 million for the State Department's Let Girls Learn Challenge Fund and $30 million for the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps has been one of the agencies most deeply involved in launching education projects worldwide. A total of 2,800 volunteers have started programs in 330 communities, ranging from teaching literacy classes that cater to girls and women denied access to education in Zambia to one that trained sisters Najlae and Rajae Lashqar to become two of Morocco's first female auto mechanics.

In an Oct. 6, 2015, blog post, Peace Corps volunteers Bonnie and Brent Moser wrote that while teaching literacy in both English and Nyanja in Zambia they observed that "men here, like in most countries of the world, are favored in many ways. They automatically garner respect, they make decisions, they go to school."

But only women - many of whom have not gone beyond sixth grade - have taken them up on the offer of free classes, Brent Moser noted.

"I'm not a professional teacher. But they don't care," he wrote. "They want to learn and I am trying to teach."