Educate Girls

Educate Girls promotes and supports girls’ education.[8]

Educate Girls creates community ownership to help communities to prioritize girls' education. The model includes the following elements:[9][10]

Facilitating community ownership through team Balika

Educate Girls has over 13,000 Team Balika (community volunteers) who work as champions for girls' education in their respective villages.[11] Team Balika members work with Government schools as well as village communities to spread awareness on girl child education.[12] Team Balika are trained in community mobilization & outreach (door-to-door surveys, enrolment activities, conducting community meetings), learning curriculum (GKP) implementation, leadership and motivation.[13] They are mostly between the ages of 18-30 and are often among the most educated members of their communities. Each Team Balika is given continuous training and hand-holding by Educate Girls throughout the year to facilitate their efforts.[14]

'Increasing girls' enrolment

After using existing Government data and door-to-door surveys (conducted by Educate Girls) to identify out-of-school girls in the area, responsibility is then distributed between the village leaders, elders, school administration, Team Balika and Educate Girls' staff to bring girls back to school.[15][16] This often involves going door-to-door to convince parents to send their girls to school and rallying the community through Gram Shiksha Sabha’s and Mohalla Meetings.[13][12]

Supporting school administration

At village meetings a 15-member council is elected to form the School Management Committee (SMC). This consists of parents, teachers and village leaders and is responsible for school governance and administration. Educate Girls handholds the committee members and provides them with support to prepare and execute School Improvement Plans (SIPs) and conduct school assessments.[17][18]

Improving learning outcomes

Educate Girls trains its Team Balika (community volunteers) to implement a remedial learning curriculum, with the use of specially designed kits, called Gyan ka Pitara (GKP).[19] The learning tools focus on building micro-competencies in English, Hindi and Math for children in Grades 3, 4 and 5. The GKP accounts for the needs of marginalised children and uses interactive tools, activities and games, and worksheets for individual children in the classroom, ensuring that no child is left behind. Tests are conducted before and after curriculum implementation to assess learning levels.[4][20][21]

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.[22]

A small local team, led by Safeena Husain, conducted the initial test project in 50 schools of Pali district in Rajasthan. This 50-school project was launched under the umbrella of the Rajasthan Education Initiative (REI).[23][24][25]

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.[23][19][26]

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

• Over 380,000 girls brought back to school
• 90% girls’ retention [27]
• 150,000 active girl leaders [28]
• Over 13,000 active Team Balika members
• 6.7 total beneficiaries
• Launched world’s first DIB (Development Impact Bond)[29] in the education sector with UBS Optimus Foundation [30] and CIFF which on its completion in 2018, surpassed both its target outcomes.[31]

Educate Girls has received the following awards:

• Millennium Alliance Award, 2014[32]
• WISE Award for innovation in Education, 2014[33]
• Stars Impact Award 2014
• India's Most Ethical Companies Award 2015[34]
• Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2015 – to Safeena Husain[35]
• Nasscom Foundation Social Innovation Award 2016[36]
• NDTV-L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth Award 2016 – to Safeena Husain[37]
• ET Prime Women Leadership Award 2019 – to Safeena Husain [38]

• Camfed, a similar nonprofit