Educate Girls Foundation Skoll Awardee Profile

Organization Overview

Key Info

Social Entrepreneur Safeena Husain

Year Awarded 2015

Issue Area Addressed Education

Sub Issue Area Addressed Early Childhood to Primary Education, Secondary Education, Women's and Girls' Education

Countries Served India

Website http://educategirls.ngo/

Twitter handle educate_girls

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/educategirls/

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/educategirlsE G

About the Organization Founded by Safeena Husain in 2007, the Educate Girls Foundation aims to usher in behavior change, bring systemic reform, bridge the enrollment gap and provide quality education to children. This holistic, community based program model is focused on improving the Enrollment- Retention-Learning cycle of every child in the educationally backward villages in which it operates.

By leveraging the government’s existing investment in schools, Educate Girls delivers measurable results to a large number of beneficiaries at an extremely low cost and avoids duplication or parallel delivery of services. It is a well-documented fact that educating girls has phenomenal multiplier effect on almost all development indicators. Educate Girls believes that if girls in educationally backward districts are educated now, they will have the potential to enter formal economy, gain employment and uplift their families and subsequently break the cycle of poverty.

Since its inception, Educate Girls has metamorphosed from a 500-school pilot in one district in Rajasthan to a 26,000+ school program spread across 17 districts across Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in India, with plans of expansion into Uttar Pradesh and Bihar over the next five years (2019-24). To date, Educate Girls has enrolled over 550,000+ girls and over 870,000+ children have demonstrated improved learning outcomes.

Impact

Educate Girls launched and successfully implemented the world’s first Development Impact Bond (DIB) in Education in partnership with UBS Optimus Foundation and Children’s Investment Fund (CIF) in Bhilwara, Rajasthan. This three year (2015-18) project tied funds to pure outcomes and was intended to be a proof of concept. The final year results, declared in July, 2018 showed that Educate Girls DIB surpassed its target outcomes with 160 percent of the final learning target and 116 percent of the final enrolment target achieved. In early 2019, Educate Girls was chosen as one of eight Audacious Projects for their idea to solve almost half of India’s out-of-school girl problem by bringing up to 1.5 million out-of-school girls back to school by 2024. This makes Educate Girls the first Asian and the only Indian non-profit ever to have been chosen as one of the Audacious ideas.

Path to Scale

Mobilizing public, private, and community resources to provide quality education for all under- served and marginalized girls.

Using innovative analytic techniques to build a predictive model (e.g., machine learning) to identify villages for future program sites with the highest concentrations of out-of-school girls.

Social Entrepreneur

Safeena, a London School of Economics graduate, has worked extensively with rural and urban under-served communities in South America, Africa and Asia. As a girl in Delhi, Safeena Husain found refuge and opportunity in her education. She went on to study in the UK before building a career in community-based global development, including seven years as executive director of Child Family Health International, an NGO based in the US. Her work in development spans more than 15 years, working on projects to serve rural and urban communities in Ecuador, Mexico, Bolivia and South Africa. In 2004, she returned to India to satisfy her commitment to girls’ education and accepted an acquaintance’s invitation to assist a struggling girls’ education program, quickly turning it around. In 2007, she founded Educate Girls to further develop her model and scale its impact. Educate Girl’s funders and board members describe her as “incredibly bright,” determined, and clever, with a “big heart” and “illuminating authenticity” that draws people to her and Educate Girls. She is “always up for a challenge,” as shown in decisions for Educate Girls to work in the most off-track geographies first and to implement the first education Development Impact Bond (DIB).

As part of the Audacious Project, Safeena gave a talk on Educate Girls’ program and her vision to enroll 1.5 million out-of-school-girls back in school by 2024 at TED 2019.

Over the last decade, Safeena’s work through Educate Girls has been recognized on numerous national and international platforms. In 2019, Safeena was awarded with Beyond the Business Award at the Economic Times Prime Women Leadership Awards. Previously, Safeena has won the 2017 Niti Aayog Women Transforming India Award and the 2016 NDTV-L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth Award in the Education Category. Under her leadership, Educate Girls has also won the 2014 WISE Award, the 2014 USAID Millennium Alliance Award, the 2014 Stars Impact Award, and the British Asian Trust’s Special Recognition Award from Prince Charles for outstanding contribution in education.

Equilibrium Overview

Current Equilibrium

According to UNESCO (2016), there are 130 million out-of-school-girls (OOSGs) between the ages of 6 to 17[1]. In India, the number of out-of-school-children (OOSC) has reduced by over 90 percent in the last decade, and we have more or less achieved universal primary education by 2015. However, despite this accomplishment, there are still about 4.1 million out-of-school- girls (OOSGs) across the country. The testament to this fact is the female literacy rate in India which is only 61% as against the male literacy rate of 82.14%[2]. The statistics indicate a glaring gender gap in the rate of literacy in India. A study by the World Economic Forum has ranked India at 108th position out of 145 countries in the Gender Gap Index for 2 consecutive years in 2017 and 2018[3] owing to severe socio-economic and cultural dimensions of marginalization and a chronically paternalistic society.[4] Exacerbating the issue of access to education, the quality of education provided in government primary schools is mostly very weak, resulting in inferior learning outcomes. In rural India, only 44.2% children in government schools in Std. V can read a standard II level text and only 22.7% children in Grade V can do division (ASER 2018). Educate Girls currently operates in the educationally backward districts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh which are two of the most educationally challenged states in India. In these districts, families and community leaders often lack awareness on the importance of educating girls, and many view girls as less economically valuable or fear for girls’ safety. Local governments fail to deliver quality, appropriate education, due to shortfalls in both curriculum structure and basic resources. In Rajasthan, the female literacy rate is only 52.12% which is one of the lowest in the country. According to a 2014 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Report, 40% of girls in Rajasthan are reported to be child brides. Also, learning outcomes of children in government schools are dismal. Only 39.1% children in grade V can read a grade II level text. In Madhya Pradesh, the female literacy rate is a dismal 59.24% and 21 out of 50 districts are under special focus as educationally backward districts. In reference to quality of learning, only 34.4 % children in Grade V can read a grade II level text [1] Source: UNESCO, 2016 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000245238 [2] Source: UNESCO, 2015 [3] Source: The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global- gender-gap-report-2018 [4] Source: World Economic Forum Report, 2017

New Equilibrium

In the new equilibrium, strong community structures are in place that hold the government and schools accountable for quality girls’ education. Each local community believes in, demands and contributes to a girl-inclusive, child-centered, high quality education from their government school. In 35,000 educationally backward villages across 4 states of India (Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (UP) with the most inequitable gender indicators, out-of- school girls are systematically identified and supported to enroll in school. Once these girls are retained, they are likely to create a multiplier effect which will impact various indicators like health, child marriage, immunization of her children, education of her children, economy, income and climate change.

Innovation

Educate Girls improves the quality of primary education in India’s gender-gap villages, with a particular focus on girls, by creating a system of community engagement and ownership around government schools and girls’ education. In each village, EG recruits and trains educated young adults (age 18 to 30) as community ambassadors for girls’ education, known as “Team Balika” volunteers, to bolster its efforts at the village level. Team Balika volunteers (both boys and girls) work alongside Educate Girls staff towards three outcomes: Increasing enrollment of girls, Increasing retention of girls, and Improving the learning outcomes of all students. Educate Girls’ program model is substantially different from other programs as it does not offer a single program solution like providing scholarships or learning material support. The offering is an all- inclusive model which covers the entire spectrum of activities. The program creates awareness and educates the community members about their rights and duties to mobilize them to participate in school improvement. Educate Girls ensures local ownership and continually pushes for increased enrollments, improved retention of children in schools and improved learning outcomes. Beyond the education system, Educate Girls works towards bringing systemic change wherein, communities deem unacceptable the norms that keep children from school: child marriages, gender bias in education, low parental involvement etc. Educate Girls tackles the problem at its roots by focusing on the following key activities: Identification of out-of- school-girls (age 5-18) by conducting a Census like door-to-door surveyEnrollment of identified out-of-school girls by convincing the parents in remote geographies into Grades 1 - 10Retention of marginalized girls in rural geographies into Grades 1-10Improve quality of learning for students studying in Grades 3-10 by implementing a remedial curriculumIncreasing the involvement and building capacities of communities to take charge of girl education through community mobilization activitiesImprove school governance and thereby an increase the availability of girl-friendly infrastructureEnhancing motivation and self-esteem of girls, and promoting girl leadership through life-skills trainingRecruiting and training local champions for girls’ education The model allows Educate Girls to create numerous innovations in program implementation and strategy. Some of the recent innovations include: 1. Development Impact Bond Educate Girls along with UBS Optimus (UBSOF) as the original investor, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) as the outcome payer launched the World’s first Development Impact Bond (DIB). This 3-year (2015 – 2018) project tied funds to pure outcomes and was intended to be a proof of concept. Educate Girls’ DIB targeted increased enrollment of marginalized girls and children's progress in literacy and numeracy outcomes. The results of Educate Girls’ DIB were announced in July 2018 and it surpassed both its target outcomes with 160% of the learning targets achieved and 116% of the final enrolment target achieved. To read more on DIB refer: https://www.educategirls.ngo/dib.aspx 2. Advanced Analytics With the help of innovative advanced analytics, Educate Girls built a predictive analytics tool that will pinpoint hot-spots where girls are at the highest risk of dropping out of schools. The predictive tool is based on the in-depth census like door-to-door survey conducted by Educate Girls and secondary government data sources. With the help of this tool, we have identified that just 5% of villages in India i.e. 35,000 villages hold about 40% of the out-of-school-girls (OOSG) population. Therefore, during the 5 years from 2019 to 2024, Educate Girls will work in these 35,000 high-incidence villages across the 4 states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as part of its intervention. 3. Adolescent Girls Program In Rajasthan, one of the most educationally backward states, 74% girls drop out of school before finishing Grade 10 (UNICEF, 2012). According to ASER (2018), more than 25% of girls in the age group of 15-17 years remain out of school. About 88% children enrolled in Grade VII can’t read a Grade II level text, 91% children in Grade VI can’t even identify letters and 77% children in Grade V can’t even perform basic division. There also exists a significant gender gap of 26.76% between the male and female literacy rate. Ajmer district of Rajasthan manifests some of the poorest gender indicators in education with the female literacy rate at a mere 56.4%. Therefore, combined with its long-standing experience in primary education, Educate Girls extended its intervention into secondary education in April 2017 through a pilot in Shrinagar block of Ajmer district in Rajasthan. Over 2 years of the pilot, Educate Girls has reached out to 4,325 adolescent girls through various activities and successfully enrolled a total of 545 adolescent girls. Educate Girls also partnered with Bodh Shiksha Samiti, a leading content partner in designing to design the content for the learning curriculum for adolescent girls in secondary level of schooling. i.e. grades 6 to 8. The special learning content is designed to prevent high drop-out rates among adolescent girls when they transition from Upper Primary to Secondary School due to poor levels of learning. The content is focused on developing competencies and building foundational skills in numeracy and literacy across Grades 6 – 8. As a part of Strategy 2.0, Educate Girls is looking to scale-up the Adolescent Girls Program to 5,000 villages across the program geography by 2024. Therefore, developing this learning content will be crucial to the outcome of the program.

Ambition for Change

Every day in India, over 4.1 million girls of school age do not show up to classrooms in which they belong. These are classrooms that could, if entered, have positive effects upon the girls’ health, wealth, and livelihood of their families and communities. Yet these girls do not show up because of myriad reasons that relate to one thing: their gender.

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