Magsaysay just a start for Safeena’s Team Balika
Educate Girls has helped 15 lakh girls in 35,000 villages of Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh return to school
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THE recognition has brought the spotlight on education of girls, but it is just a beginning, every single girl deserves education, says Safeena Husain, founder of Educate Girls, the non-profit organisation that has been chosen for the Ramon Magsaysay Award this year.
Safeena, who grew up in Delhi and studied at Delhi Public School, graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1995. There was a gap year in her education, which she says was the lowest phase in her life. “Getting admission to LSE suddenly changed everything. I saw myself differently, the world saw me differently. It was truly transformative,” says Safeena.
Safeena shifted to San Francisco, working with a start-up in Silicon Valley. But something deep inside urged her to move on and find purpose in life. She started volunteering in health and welfare for the underprivileged in the US, which took her to Latin America and Africa. Her experiences there prepared her to build the Educate Girls model. “I worked in healthcare in Ecuador’s Amazon jungle, where you have 40 homes in one place, then you walk eight hours to reach another 40 homes. Back in India, I wasn’t intimidated by working in remote and tribal areas due to my grounding there,” she says.
Back in India in 2005, Safeena wanted to work on the education of girls, an issue close to her heart. She realised that the biggest problem lay in rural areas. Starting small in 2007, Educate Girls’ teams would visit every single village in a district and identify out-of-school girls in each household. Thereafter, they’d convince families to enrol them back in schools.
Working closely with the local community and government, Educate Girls has so far helped 15 lakh out-of-school girls in 35,000 villages of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar return to school. The retention rate is 90 per cent. The target is one crore girls in the next 10 years, says Safeena, adding, “We have handed over 8,000 successful villages for the community to manage.”
The success, she underscores, lies in the strength of community volunteers — ‘Team Balika’, the foot soldiers of the organisation. Herself a volunteer, she knew the power of volunteering, “for the motivation comes from within. It enables you to meet other youngsters and network with passionate, like-minded people”.
In schools, Team Balika volunteers conduct ‘gyan ka pitara’, an activity-based fun-filled foundation course in literacy and numeracy, while there are life-skills activities like ‘bal sabha’ for older children.
The slogan ‘Mera Gaon, Meri Samasya, Main Hoon Samadhan’ (My Village, My Problem, I Am the Solution) sums up their motivation. While their initiative ‘Vidya’ is aimed at enrolling out-of-school girls back into schools, ‘Pragati’ targets older girls who had to drop out due to marriage or other responsibilities. These older girls are helped by the NGO teachers for six-eight months to prepare for examinations under the open board.
Financially, what’s worked for the NGO is the Development Impact Bond, a payment-by-results financing model, and TED Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative. They have also been making optimum use of data by using an app-based monitoring system, besides artificial intelligence.
Village school management committees have been revived with regular elections. “We have created a chart for these committees to monitor any issues. They are questioning the authorities — be it no running water in the toilets, or lack of teachers’ attendance,” says Safeena.
The road ahead remains full of challenges, says the founder of Educate Girls and wife of filmmaker Hansal Mehta. “Families don’t give priority to the education of girls, restrain their mobility, marry them at an early age and push them to do household chores. Things are changing for the positive though. The number of out-of-school younger girls has decreased dramatically,” says Safeena, adding that the problem now lies with older ones.
“There is huge positivity as the girls have access to education. There’s the Right to Education Act and ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ campaign; you don’t have to go and ask families to teach girls, for everyone has heard about it,” she says. The challenge is to actually get them to act, shed inhibitions, and send girls to school, she adds.
— The writer is a freelance contributor
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