Break the Cycle of Poverty - Invest In Empowering Girls

India is home to 120 million adolescent girls, the largest in the world. Most of these girls live in socially and economically communities. This means that these adolescent girls are the next generation of leaders, workers, and mothers. Yet the potential of adolescent girls to thrive is limited because they are girls. 

Adolescent girls, especially in socially and economically backward communities. They spend less time in school than boys; perform a disproportionate share of domestic work; have less mobility outside the home and fewer acceptable public spaces for leisure activity; and claim fewer friends, mentors, and social outlets. They are further hampered because there is enormous resistance by adults to listen to girls, especially marginalized girls. As a result, adolescent girls often lose their voices.

The NCPCR report states that around 40 percent of adolescent girls in the 15-18 age group are not attending any educational institution, and a vast majority — around 65 percent — of them are "either engaged in household activities, are dependents, or, are engaged in begging. 

Even today 27% of girls are married before the legal age of 18. India is home to the highest child brides in the world,  27% of girls are married before the legal age of 18. 

Adolescent girls, especially in socially and economically backward communities are most impacted with serious implications on girls’ health and education. It ends her hopes and aspirations trapping them in a cycle of poverty.

Milaan recognizes that these girls are best suited to understand their unique circumstances and hence, must take center stage in their own transformation. We define empowerment as a process of building one’s awareness and capacity leading to greater participation, decision making power, control, and transformative action. 

To tackle the systemic issues faced by adolescent girls and young women, we empower adolescent girls to use their voice, choice and power against all forms of gender inequality through our focused interventions for adolescent girls

The Girl Icon Fellowship program - Girl Icon Program is girl-led leadership 2-year leadership development program for school going and out of school girls between the ages of 12-18 from low income communities.The Program invests in collectivizing girls at the grassroots, delivering comprehensive life-skills based education and instigating collective social actions on issues that affect adolescent girls. Currently the program has a network of 10,000 adolescent girls led by 378 Girl Icons in 4 states of India.

Established in 2007, Milaan school is building a residential leadership academy for high performing adolescent girls from low-income communities to finish secondary education (grade 9th to 12th) and simultaneously undergo the fellowship program. Through the School we aim at addressing the high drop out of girls after class 8th. 

Both interventions aim at educating girls to place them on a path towards employability and financial stability to eradicate poverty from their families and communities. According to the World Bank, the return on 1 year of secondary education for a girl correlates with as high as a 25% increase in wages later in life. The effects carry from one generation to the next: educated girls have fewer, healthier and better-educated children. For each additional year of a mother’s education, the average child attains an extra 0.32 years, and for girls, the benefit is slightly larger.

By training and educating adolescent girls we create the conditions for them to fulfill their right to gender equality, to be healthy, educated, safe and economically empowered, to lift their families out of poverty and transform communities. We will achieve the following impact:

1. 95% of girls will report Completion of Secondary Education
2. less than 1 % girls will be a child bride
3. 85% of girls will report improved Adolescent Health
4. More than 80% of girls will recognize and defy gender-based violence and discrimination as unconstitutional within their homes and communities
5. 90% of girls will experience enhanced agency

When empowered with the knowledge, skills, social networks, opportunities and services to succeed in life, and make informed choices, adolescent girls tend to marry later, bear children later, and have better health and economic outcomes for themselves leading to stronger, inclusive and more prosperous communities.