Educate Girls

Educate Girls

Founded	2007
Founder	Safeena Husain
Type	Community Service
Focus	Girl Education
Location	India
Area served	Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, India
Method	Partnership with Government Schools in Educationally Backward Districts
Key people	Safeena Husain
Volunteers	over 8000
Website	www.educategirls.ngo

Educate Girls is a non-profit organization in India that aims to tackle issues at the root cause of gender inequality in India’s education system.^[1] Founded in 2007, the non-governmental organization has its management and outreach office in Mumbai and operations in 10 districts across Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Since 2007, Educate Girls has worked with over 12,000 government schools, and the introduction of creative learning and teaching techniques in classrooms has consistently shown increased learning outcomes every year.^[2] Since its inception in 2007, the organization has reached over 3.8 million total beneficiaries, and enrolled close to 120,000 out-of-school girls in school ^[3] Educate Girls was founded by Safeena Husain.

Executive summary

Educate Girls involves and empowers various stakeholders to create a system that promotes and supports girls’ education.

Educate Girls creates community ownership to help communities to prioritize girls' education. The model includes the following elements:^[4]

Team Balika

Team Balika consists of over 8000 community volunteers who work as champions for girls’ education and catalysts for school reform. Team Balika members work in the schools as well as village communities spreading awareness on girl education. They boost enrollment, retention and learning outcomes for all girls. Team Balika is trained in community mobilization & outreach, CLT techniques, leadership, and motivation.

'Community - Led' Enrollment Plans

After identifying out-of-school girls in the area, village meetings are organized to prepare community-led enrollment plans. Responsibility is distributed between the village leaders, elders, school administrations, Team Balika (Community Volunteers) and Educate Girls' staff to bring the girls back to school.

School Management Committees

At village meetings, a 12-15 member council is elected for a School Management Committee (SMC). This consists of parents, teachers and village leaders and is responsible for school governance and administrations. Educate Girls trains the SMC and provides them with the support to prepare and execute School Improvement Plans (SIPs) and conduct school assessments

Creative Learning and Teaching Techniques & Classroom Support

Educate Girls trains one teacher per school in Creative Learning & Teaching (CLT) techniques. Tests are conducted before and after training to assess learning levels. Classroom hand-holding support is provided by Educate Girls staff and trained Team Balika. As a result of Educate Girls' CLT interventions, over the past 9 years of operations average learning gains of 25-40% have been achieved.^[5]

Creation of Girl Leaders

Educate Girls facilitates the election of Bal Sabhas (Girls' Councils) in every upper primary school. This 13-member council gives girls a leadership position within the school and training in life skills to boost communication, leadership and problem solving skills.

History

A small local team, led by Safeena Husain, conducted the initial test project in 50 schools of Pali and Jalore districts in Rajasthan. This 50-school project was launched under the umbrella of the Rajasthan Education Initiative (REI).^[6][7]

After successful completion of the test phase, the organization was independently registered in 2007 and won government approval to start a pilot project in 500 schools in 2008, working with 70,000 children in the Bali, Sumerpur and Rani blocks of Pali district with the cooperation and support extended by partners like UNICEF, Pratham Rajasthan, SERVE and Dream Catchers Foundation.^[8]

Area of work

With community mobilization and sustainability as the guiding parameters, the NGO aims to:

• Enhance enrollment and retention of girls through individual tracking, community mobilization and quality improvement
• Reduce gender disparity in schools and project areas, and improve the level of life skills and competency of the girl
• Ensure increased participation of children, families and communities in plans and actions for holistic education

Impact

• Over 120,000 girls brought back to school
• 90% girls’ enrollment
• 93% girls’ retention
• Over 77,000 active girl leaders
• Over 8,000 active Team Balika members
• Over 500,000 girls benefitted from Creative Learning and Teaching techniques
• Launched World’s first DIB (Development Impact Bond) in the education sector with UBS Optimus Foundation and CIFF^[9]

Recognition

Educate Girls has received the following awards:

• DASRA Village Capital Award, 2010
• Karmaveer Puraskar, 2011
• EdelGive Social Innovation Honors, 2011
• Asia 21, Young Leader, 2011
• The World Bank’s India Development Marketplace Award, 2011
• The Rotary’s Anita Parekh Award, 2012
• The CSR Women Leader Award, 2012
• WomenChangeMakers Award, 2012
• British Asian Trust Special Recognition Award, 2013
• Millennium Alliance Award, 2014^[10]
• WISE Award for innovation in Education, 2014^[11]
• Stars Impact Award 2014
• India's Most Ethical Companies Award 2015^[12]
• Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2015 – to Safeena Husain^[13]
• Nasscom Foundation Social Innovation Award 2016^[14]
• NDTV-L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth Award 2016 – to Safeena Husain^[15]

References

External links

• Official website