Educate Girls

Context

• India has the world’s largest illiterate population - women and girls in rural areas are especially affected.
• Poverty is one cause, but more importantly, cultural and social barriers, bad quality of education and inadequate infrastructure (such as lack of toilets) keep many parents from sending their children - especially girls - to school.

Solution

• Educate Girls (EG) works towards increasing the enrollment of girls in schools by identifying out-of-school girls through a door-to-door survey or secondary research. EG then mobilizes communities and makes them aware of the necessity of sending girls to school.
• EG partners with other organizations to create better pedagogy and creative learning methodologies to improve education quality and learning outcomes.
• EG trains public school teachers and appoints para-teachers to enhance quality of teaching and improve retention in schools.
• EG also trains local community members who liaise with the government to seek funds and implement projects to improve school infrastructure.

Impact depth

By 2018, 4 million out-of-school children, especially girls, will have an opportunity to a better life through EG's initiatives of empowering girls in villages, educating communities on importance of girls’ education and improving infrastructure and teaching quality in public schools.

Educate Girls contributes to:

• Quality education: Improved access to quality education strengthens cognitive capacity and the ability to think independently, form own opinions and make the right decisions for girl’s future lives.
• Health improvements: Families with educated girls experience improved health and lower child mortality as shown by research of UN/World Bank.
• Inclusion, equality and tolerance: Families with educated girls benefit from an increased social cohesion, higher gender equality and religious tolerance.
• Poverty reduction: Educated girls and boys are likely to get better jobs and therefore help their families break out of the cycle of extreme poverty.