Educate Girls’ is a non-profit organization in India, established in 2007, founded by Safeena Husain, that works towards girls' education in India's rural and educationally backward areas by mobilising communities. It currently operates in over 13,000 villages in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. By leveraging the Government’s existing investment in schools and by engaging with a huge base of community volunteers, Educate Girls helps to identify, enrol and retain out-of-school girls and to improve foundational skills in literacy and numeracy for all children. Since its inception in 2007, the organization has reached over 6.7 million total beneficiaries, and has helped mobilise communities to enrol close to 380,000 out-of-school girls in school.
Executive summary
Educate Girls promotes and supports girls’ education. Educate Girls creates community ownership to help communities to prioritize girls' education. The model includes the following elements: Facilitating community ownership through team Balika Educate Girls has over 13,000 Team Balika who work as champions for girls' education in their respective villages. Team Balika members work with Government schools as well as village communities to spread awareness on girl child education. Team Balika are trained in community mobilization & outreach, learning curriculum implementation, leadership and motivation. 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. 'Increasing girls' enrolment After using existing Government data and door-to-door surveys 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. 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. Supporting school administration At village meetings a 15-member council is elected to form the School Management Committee. 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 and conduct school assessments. Improving learning outcomes Educate Girls trains its Team Balika to implement a remedial learning curriculum, with the use of specially designed kits, called Gyan ka Pitara. 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. Creation of girl leaders Educate Girls facilitates the election of Bal Sabhas 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 district in Rajasthan. This 50-school project was launched under the umbrella of the Rajasthan Education Initiative. 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.
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 380,000 girls brought back to school
90% girls’ retention
150,000 active girl leaders
Over 13,000 active Team Balika members
6.7 total beneficiaries
Launched world’s first DIB in the education sector with UBS Optimus Foundation and CIFF which on its completion in 2018, surpassed both its target outcomes.
