Yuwa: Girls' Scholarships to Combat Child Marriage

"Yuwa helped me to save my life. If I was not in Yuwa, I would be married now.“

—Riya, Yuwa School graduate from 2023, currently pursuing her BSci/BEd at Azim Premji University on full scholarship 

“To educate girls is to reduce poverty.”

-Kofi Annon

Yuwa School works in rural Jharkhand, where 6 out of 10 girls drop out of school and become child brides. To break this cycle, girls need confidence, resilience, a supportive community, and a quality education. Yuwa School offers a transformative space in which vulnerable girls gain the skills and support necessary to take their futures into their own hands.

This holiday season, your donation will go DIRECTLY towards supporting the scholarships that allow Yuwa girls to go to school everyday. 100% of Yuwa’s students receive scholarships that cover more than 90% of the cost of their education. All of these girls are from families who live below the poverty line and are vulnerable to child marriage.

Yuwa School is a non-profit, university-preparatory school for girls from vulnerable and impoverished backgrounds. With 94 students and 10 full-time teachers, Yuwa School creates a holistic and academically challenging environment which aims to put girls powerfully in charge of their own futures, enabling them to break out of the cycle of poverty--permanently. Yuwa’s innovative incorporation of a holistic football and female coaches' development program allows more than 650 girls across the region to gain confidence, community, and connection to female mentors.

Yuwa School alumni have achieved incredible success after their graduation, landing scholarships at top institutions across India and abroad including: Ashoka University, Harvard University, United World College, Krea University, Washington and Lee University, Azim Premji University, Vidyashilp University, Asian University for Women, BML Munjal University, and more.

"Here, teachers and even the principal are like friends to the girls. They mingle. Most importantly, children have fun in school. They enjoy being in school. If they don’t want to miss even a single day of school, surely there’s a good reason for it. This interest just wasn’t there in the other school. I hear that my daughter has not missed even a single day (in over 3 years) and the only reason is because she loves it. She’s moving far ahead in her future."

-Dayanand, a Yuwa School father