Education Resilience Fund for adolescent Girls from rural India

SwaTaleem works with historically underrepresented girls in India: first-generation learners, caste and religious minorities, and low socio-economic backgrounds, with outcomes like high school dropouts and early, forced marriages. These girls attend special schools called Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs) established by the government in every educationally backward block of the country. SwaTaleem integrates in-person and low-technology components to enhance academic and life skills in girls (by focusing specifically on English and socio-emotional skills) and create an aware and engaged ecosystem of decision makers like the school teachers, parents, and government officials that support their education.

Scaling through the KGBV network, SwaTaleem expanded across the entire state of Haryana impacting 30,000 family members and with 5,000 girls going through multiple-year interventions at any time point across 31 KGBVs.

“If it takes a village to raise a child, let’s build one for our girls!”

We want to do exactly that, with YOUR help! 

The Village Model: It takes a village to raise a Girl child; let’s build one for our KGBV girls.

Using a 'Village Approach,' SwaTaleem integrates in-person and low technology components to enhance academic and life skills in girls (by focussing specifically on English and life skills), their schoolteachers and create an aware and engaged ecosystem of decision makers like parents and government officials that support their education. 

SwaTaleem works with all the stakeholders responsible for decision-making for the Girls, affecting their life outcomes in the long run. We do this through a hybrid approach. 

The physical engagement includes:

1.Girls: In-person sessions on academic and life skills are conducted for them twice every week. We also give sessions on Life Skills and English Language through physical and tech-based means.

Saheli Ki Udaan - This program focuses on enhancing the English and Life skills of the adolescent girls in the KGBV schools of Haryana. Armed with thoroughly researched and carefully designed learning and teaching pedagogy, we at SwaTaleem Foundation work in coordination with the state government, school administration, and parents. 

2.Teachers: Teachers attend intensive centralized workshops at the beginning of the year, followed by in-person monthly cluster sessions and weekly field support by the SwaTaleem team. They implement learning in the classroom. We also provide NCERT Aid, which focuses on aiding the teachers by providing an easy-to-use and easy-to-understand booklet and helping them teach NCERT English.

3.Local Women Leaders: It makes a positive impact in terms of aspirations for the Girls if they see the women from their local surroundings coming and teaching them. Local women leaders get intensive support during the beginning of the academic year, followed by regular support from the design and readiness team.

The low-tech engagement includes:

Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS)- It is an automated telephony system technology that interacts with callers through voice and keypad. This allows for an interactive experience catered to the individual.

1. Girls: Girls receive learning content weekly through IVRS, post-schooling hours via tablets in hostels and via simple phones in their respective homes,
2. Parents: Parents receive the follow-up call through IVRS weekly through IVRS appraising them on the the learning content and any other pertinent information about their daughters
3. Teachers: Teachers receive monthly updates on their phones about IVRS engagements of their schools
4. Government Officials: They receive monthly updates in their phones about IVRS engagements of their schools

Other programs for our Girls in KGBVs:

1.Science-Gender Curriculum (Mai Bhi Curie/I am also Curie):In partnership with TARA Foundation, a 3 year curriculum based on NCERT and lived realities of our Girls on Science and Gender is being run in KGBV Jalmana. The year culminated with:

• Our Girls conducted for the parents and other community members. Around 30 models were made by 55 Girls participating in the event.
• Girls from KGBV Jalmana won - Science and Maths model competitions at block and district level, and was the youngest participant team at State level

2.Running and Life Skills Program (Run2Fly Program): In partnership with La-Ultra, a structured running program to build socio-emotional skills through running, excel in the process and explore any tentative avenues from a career perspective. To build an anticipation for the program, race events (100 m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m) were conducted as part of Kasturba Sangam, the glimpses of the same can be found here

3.Career Awareness Program: We will be launching a Career awareness program in the upcoming session to support Girls around building awareness for doing career planning. This will be done in partnership.

Funds Utilization

This campaign is to scale up our work to other KGBVs in Haryana and support all girls fulfil their potential. All funds will be utilized to expand our work to the entire state of Haryana, in-person and digitally covering 5000 Girls in 31 KGBVs including their families. This will include English and life skill activities for girls, workshops for teachers, digital connections across all schools, extracurricular activities for girls (including running workshops), and government and parent engagement programs.

Donate for this cause and get tax exemption under 501(c)(3)

Everyone can support our girls' dreams. Here's the impact you can create.

We believe in the collective voice and power of many to bring about change. Indeed, this is needed now more than ever. Your support will help us directly support 5000 adolescent girls from rural, marginalized communities in Haryana.

• At INR 1500 / USD 20 per year you can support an adolescent girl have access to resources and appropriate technology platform (example: IVR System, mobile recharge) to stay connected during and after the lockdown.
• At INR 3600 / USD 50 per year you can support an adolescent girl have access to support spaces, gender-sensitive and contextually relevant learning content and activities. Such engagements will enable us to prevent girls from dropping out of schooling.
• At INR 4000 / USD 75 per month you can support a teacher access learning opportunities to build her capacity and practices, in the process making the learning process engaging and meaningful for the girls.
• At INR 5000 / USD 71 per month you can support a young, women leader from the community, our field coordinator, mobilize local communities to support girls’ education and directly work with the girls at the village level.

How much should I give?

By contributing USD 8, you will help us serve 1 girl for 1 year.

By contributing USD 20, you will help us train 1 teacher for 1 month

By contributing USD 120, you will help us train 1 teacher for 6 months

By contributing USD 100, you will support the cost of 1 school for 1 month

By contributing USD 320, you will support the cost of 1 cluster (group of 5 schools) for 1 month

By contributing USD 4, you will help us support the engagement of 1 family for 6 months

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Contact

info@swataleem.org

www.swataleem.org