2014-2024

GETTING INDIAN GIRLS INTO CLASSROOMS

2014-2024

EDUCATE GIRLS

Educate Girls tackles the gender and literacy gap in rural India’s education system to bring out-of-school girls back to mainstream education. From an initial pilot project of 50 schools in 2007, it currently operates in over 20,000 villages in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. We’ve been funding its unique approach since 2014, helping enroll over 54,300 girls, which it aims to scale to 1.5 million girls by 2024.

www.educategirls.in

CHALLENGE

In India, over 4 million girls aged between seven and 14 fail to show up at school every day. That’s one of the highest out-of-school rates in the world. The reasons behind this are many, ranging from deeply entrenched social and cultural norms, to economic factors and lack of family support.

ACTION

Educate Girls mobilises and supervises a huge number of community volunteers, called Team Balika, who go door to door across thousands of villages to identify girls that are not in school and convince families to enroll them.

Household visits and community outreach are at the heart of the organisation’s success. Its analytics enable the targeting of villages with a higher concentration of out-of-school girls.

The organisation also taps into government resources to improve schools’ infrastructure, governance and teaching. It offers an interactive remedial education programme to help girls (and boys) build their competences in Hindi, English and Maths.

In every upper primary school, Educate Girls facilitates the election of a Girls’ Council to give girls a voice, boost their confidence and build life skills, such as communication, leadership and problem-solving.

IMPACT

Educate Girls has consistently achieved impressive enrollment and learning outcomes, backed by a proven, replicable and codified model.

950,000

OUT-OF-SCHOOL GIRLS ENROLLED

since Educate Girls’ inception

RETENTION RATE

till 2019

15,000

COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS

make up Educate Girls’ team

COVID-19 EMERGENCY SUPPORT

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak in India, Educate Girls is providing assistance to vulnerable rural households by purchasing and distributing grocery and hygiene kits. The organisation has a unique cpacity to leverage its network of community volunteers and field staff who are close to the affected population. Our grant is part of a match-funding camapign that raised US$2M, allowing 115,000 households to be reached with relief kits.