Pragati, A Second Chance At Education: ‘Educate Girls’ Project Aims To Empower Adolescent Girls & Young Women

Beti Bachao -Beti Padhao is the message of the Government in order to educate and empower women. Many organisations in the country are working in this direction. Educate Girls is one such organisation which has launched Project Pragati, with a vision to enable 10th-grade credentialing for 10 million girls in 10 years. It is a flexible approach to secondary education for out-of-school adolescent girls and young women, which brings them back to education through the government-open school system.

India’s Right to Education Act covers children between 5-14 years of age; research shows that in India, 66 Million girls aged 15-25 are permanently at risk of never completing their secondary education. Completing 10th grade examination will enable girls to access entry-level jobs, traditional loans, further education, and vocational training. This boosts their agency and increases their potential for autonomy, growth, and aspirations toward an independent and financially inclusive life.

An empathic, human-centric approach

Project Pragati works with digital assistance alongside an empathic, human-centric approach at a programmatic level. At the heart of the program is a Prerak, a compassionate adult from within the community who identifies permanently dropped-out adolescent girls and young women, gets them enrolled with an open school and supports them in their exam preparation by conducting village-based learning camps.

Innovating the ‘Second Chance at Learning’

As far as innovating the ‘Second Chance at Learning’ Approach is concerned, according to research, a 10th certificate in India has a lifetime wealth effect of USD60,000. However, after the Covid-19 Pandemic, the number of out-of-school adolescent girls has significantly risen. Educate Girls has stepped forward with urgency to bring an immediate solution to this.

Opportunity for young women to build a better life

“For us, 2022 was about progress, about pushing our ambitious goal to provide education to every girl in India,” shares Safeena Husain, Founder & Board Member of Educate Girls. “With Project Pragati, it is our aim to ensure young women who have no hopes of being in school get a second chance at education and build a better life for themselves.”

A chance to move forward

“At Educate Girls, we believe that a second chance at education is a chance to move forward. Our mission is to build towards impacting a million learners per year through Pragati. Bringing about such a change at a population level scale will need an entire ecosystem to be catalyzed, and starting this year that’s going to be our focus. We are very excited about the way forward.” shared the Project Lead for Pragati, Geetika Higgins.

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The objective of the non-profit organisation

Educate Girls is a non-profit that focuses on mobilising communities for girls’ education in India’s rural and educationally backward areas. Working in partnership with the Government, Educate Girls currently operates successfully in over 20,000 villages of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. By engaging with a huge base of community volunteers, Educate Girls helps to identify, enroll, and retain out-of-school girls and to improve foundational skills in literacy and numeracy for all children (both girls and boys).

(Source-PTI)