Edu-GIRLS fight COVID

Our COVID ACTION AGENDA (CAA) ensures that poverty and COVID lockdowns do not prevent girls from getting a quality education they need to get out of poverty.

CAA involves

1. Distribution of Rations to keep girls off the street.

2. Effective Digital Learning using personal devices with syllabus linked software;

3. Incentives for girls to overcome pressure to earn at the cost of education;

4. Incentives for teachers to work smarter and harder;

5. Educated Mothers working as mentors in the slums to overcome disruption of bonds with teachers;

6. Regular Learning assessments in STEM subjects using ASSET software; and

7. Customized self learning using MINDSPARK software to bring learning to grade level.

Our CAA model has attracted the attention of national media and could lead to a wider acceptance of the wisdom and effectiveness of taking girls living in poverty into the world of digital leaning.

Education of girls is a major development opportunity to eradicate global poverty but for the major difficulty of delivering quality education to girls living in poverty. Globally, nearly 70M girls are not in school and in India only 20% of girls finish high school.

The difficulty arises because of a gender bias in traditional societies where girls are given a lower priority for family resources over their male counterparts who most likely will look after parents in old age. Girls are to care for the home front, looking after younger siblings or making supplemental income while both parents are out doing low skill work

Our mission is to apply effective solutions to these complex factors using our 10 MANTRA model which took a major hit with the lockdowns of COVID 19.

By launching a successful Covid Action Agenda we were able to work our way through this crisis helped by a technology enabled bold jump into the world of digital learning customized for girls living in poverty.

A warm reception to our model in the media has raised prospects of extending it to new locations and of positively affecting Government policies which could have an even larger multiplier effect.

Our 10 MANTRA model is designed to break the grip of the gender and poverty nexus by

• eliminating financial cost to family;
• ensuring a safe campus and secure transport;
• delivering quality through integration of technology and digital learning;
• motivating teachers to work smarter through incentives;
• motivating girls for staying at school and performing;
• ensuring market readiness through emphasis on STEM instruction; and
• supporting vocational and college scholarships till girls get jobs.

COVID crisis required a technology enabled jump into digital learning, overcoming multiple challenges:

• Unfamiliarity with the digital world:  feeling empowered taking home their personal tablets, they embraced on-line learning ; 
• Usurpation by males in family: mothers ensured girls had access helped by special software protections which prevented other uses.
• Risk of loss in slum setting: contracts made parents responsible.
• Teachers new to digital learning: offered financial incentives to learn and apply.
• Confusing supply of software packages: Principal lead team to review all available packages;
• Lack of connectivity: school paid for data to ensure participation.
• Postponement of School Board exams: use of ASSET on-line learning assessment package to track progress in STEM subjects; and
• Loss of learning: Customized self learning programs on MindSPARK to bring learning to grade level.

Our target population, to put in bluntly, are daughters of slum dwellers. Parents typically have migrated from villages to urban centers lured by service jobs but given high cost of living, have ended up living in slums. Typical family incomes are less than $3 per day, with both parents working to keep food on the family floor. Mothers typically work as maids and fathers pull rickshaws or serve as drivers or guards with some in low wage technical work as painters or mechanics.

Girls in our schools are more often first time leaners, with demands to do home chores, look after siblings or even try to earn a meager income on the side. Time to learn is constantly under threat. They feel a high pressure to get married young to transfer responsibility to the other family.

They are low on priority for any family resource, whether it comes to access to mobile phones or to nutritious meals or even health care. Education for them is considered a luxury, though its value is understood. Girls as part of community outreach efforts  often do campaigns to raise awareness about value of getting an education and delaying marriage.

Our accredited schools are staffed with people who empathize with their situation, who interact regularly with the families ( even in COVID times, parent meetings are on Zoom). Teachers often become life counsellors to the girls. Educated mothers are paid an honorarium to learn how digital learning works, work as mentors and to provide feedback. 

Girls' primary drive is first, to be treated on par with their brothers and second, to get an education to help the family. Their last desire is to get married. Our 10 MANTRA model and CAA directly respond to this drive. Girls feel empowered by being saviors of the family during lock downs being the source of food, they feel special with their own tablets which they can take home and with incentives to stay in school, scholarships for vocational and college phase, their parents feel less of an urge to marry them off.

At the cost of about a $1 a day, our model, boosted by the CAA jump into the world of digital learning, can deliver not only on dreams of the 1000 girls currently in our program but to give all girls living in poverty the hope of breaking through the glass ceiling of poverty and gender bias.

We are sharply focused on low income communities who have migrated to urban areas but are stuck in poverty.

Within that group, we are focused on girls who are often second class citizens in their own family but who are potentially major agents of societal change.

We actively pursue digital literacy: our girls are jumping into the world of digital learning for academic and life skills. We bring them most appropriate technology selected from the market, ensure connectivity, protect against misuse thus making an effective use of the internet. 

At a cost of less than what Government spends per child.

We are between Pilot and Growth Stage.

Despite disruptions of COVID 19, our model has blossomed at our flagship Vimukti Girls School in Jaipur, India where the 10 MANTRAS are in operation and CAA is in full force.  Nearly 650 girls from the slums have continued to learn through the pandemic supported by technology on their new personal tablets. 32 girls are in jobs after completing vocational training and 7 are in college getting ready for careers in commerce and teaching. Costs are low, just $1 per day per girl.

An independent evaluation of our model has been just launched and media reports are good.

Success has created more demand, setting us up for growth.

Step by step replication of our technology  linked model in underway in Bangalore. We have placed a Director in Delhi as we review nominations of new schools to be accredited near Agra and in Delhi.

Our innovation lies in the delivery of a package of interventions which are uniquely suited to the circumstance of girls living in poverty.

While many organizations do indeed support interventions which constitute our 10 MANTRAS, we deliver the 10 interventions as a complete package seeking to leave no one behind in poverty.

Our innovation lies in making a bold jump into the world of digital learning to fight COVID 19 lock downs and its potential loss of learning. Digital learning is a vital part of the package for the vast frontier it opens up for girls whose world view is limited to experience in a slum. COVID lock downs  highlighted the massive role that technology can play. In a span on 3 months girls moved from virtually no schooling to all out digital learning, not just for the official syllabus but for acquiring useful life skills. 

Our innovation lies in using technology to track progress in STEM subjects when School Board exams were cancelled. 

Our innovation lies in using technology to create customized self learning modules to bring girls up to grade level and challenge those who are above.

Our innovation lies in efficiency, doing this package at about $1 per day, which is less than what the Government spends in its schools, assuring replicability once the model is widely accepted.

Our innovation lies in setting up independent evaluation of our Model by the Department of Development Studies at a Jaipur university, to build the foundation for replication.

The social multiplier from educating a girl is huge. The social cost to the planet of not taking our girls to high school has been estimated by the World Bank to be in trillions of dollars. The impact of girls' education on social and economic indicators and even on climate change are quite staggering. 

Let us forget the multiplier.

Despite COVID disruptions when about 180 girls left their urban slums for villages with their families, we are serving 950 girls directly. We expect to be serving 1750 by 2023 and 5000 by 2026. Serving in our model means working with them from the time they enter our program till they achieve financial independence.

Each educated girl significantly impacts the immediate family since most girls are first time learners. They bring new knowledge and improve the family's ability to negotiate the world around them.

Should our model reach a stage of wider acceptance, we would not be surprised if the impact is quite  wide. For example, our digital leap has already influenced Rajasthan Government to promise -  though it will be difficult to keep - a similar efforts in all Government schools. A national commission on education had last year endorsed the concept of schedule adjustments to suit the needs of families which we have been practicing.

Recent  media report June 6 in the national press and on social media will accelerate the pace at which some our ideas impact the larger universe, though the link maybe difficult to establish. 

At the level of our schools, we follow a results based culture based on measurement of individual, class and school progress.

a. All accredited schools keep a standard set of records which are used to set long term goals and report annually on Key Performance Indicators which in turn are consolidated and presented to donors on our website and Annual Report:

- Number of Girls enrolled at year end (from pre KG to VT/College)

- Annual Retention Rate (pre KG-12)

- Percentage First Division in Grade 8,10, 12 Board Exams

- Percentage of Girls graduating from 12 grade, Enrolled in VT/College 

-Percentage of Girls Graduating from VT/College placed into first jobs  

-Average Salary in First Jobs 

b. Progressively we are linking our grant disbursements to the achievement of agreed results  (a process slowed down by disruptions of COVID) whereby grant amounts are discounted based on underperformance and incentives are added to future grants based on over-performance.

c. We are all set up to offer our donors a new Pay on Performance (POP) instrument as a data-driven incentivized approach to lead our girls for life success. POP will require schools to use  performance to drive school improvement towards established goals. Donors will be able to link their support to outcomes.

Our solution team is Global and largely volunteers but for school teaching and administrative staff.

The US team has 9 people with 4 women, 3 former World Bank managers and 2 Rotarians.

School leadership teams are 50% women with about 40 full time teaching staff and 2 technology advisers.

Edu-GIRLS  was set up by former World Bank staff with the sole aim to empower girls through quality education leading to their emergence out of poverty.

With nearly 100 years of development and project work experience behind them, these retirees from the World Bank have links to global expertise as well as an ability to convert such expertise to relevant action programs on the ground and motivate school staff to implement these and learn from experience.

The Board includes retired senior corporate executives and committed women putting their passion to work, especially on promoting the cause and raising funds.

Most importantly our accredited schools are led by committed women who founded their organizations. Partners like Lavalina  Sogani in Jaipur,  (the late) Rohini Venugopal in Bangalore, Usha Acharaya in Nepal, Seema Aziz in Pakistan, Mala Rastogi in Agra and Suman Khanna Agarwal in Delhi are distinguished women leaders working for decades in this space. They have great empathy for and take pains to be in constant touch with the people they are trying to help.

The US team's effort is to boost the effectiveness of these leaders in the field with ideas, resources and a strong focus on results.

We follow a policy of non discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, religion or age. Our Board is gender balanced by design as are our schools which are secular by design and open to all based on one simple criteria: economic hardship. 

When a recent Board position opened up, we targeted  our search to women candidates to restore gender balance.

While an inflow of funds would certainly help, the primary driver for us to be a solver is to strengthen our impact monitoring system and to be a part of a network to promote a technology supported solution to a chronic problem of global importance: not allowing poverty to come in the way educating girls to lead them out of poverty.

Our impact measurement effort is currently anchored at the Department of Development Studies at the Institute of Public Health in Jaipur as part of a PhD program. We would seek through the Network of Solvers to strengthen the credibility of the job being done as it is vital to our goal of influencing a larger audience of policy makers.

We have influenced our friends in Rotary International to develop simple comparative indicators of national progress in education of girls. Through the Network of Solvers we would like to validate the effectiveness of the regular publication and wide dissemination of these indicators in promoting change.

The world underperformed on the UN's Millennium Development Goal 2 but then simply moved on the setting up an even more ambitious Sustainable Development Goal 4 without spelling out concrete ways to get there. Through the Network of Solvers and engagement with social and global media, we hope that our solution, which enhances the prospects of the achievement of SGD 4,  will get appropriate attention and lead to greater impact.

Public Relations: Our goal is ambitious and our approach is unique. Our results take a long time to be evident. Establishing an image for our brand is a major challenge; without which not only our fund raising is affected but our success is not able to influence other programs or overall policy.

For the first time ever on June 6th did the national mediain India hailed our efforts to bridge the digital divide. We saw an immediate multiplier from that coverage since it led to posting on social media by Together Women Rise who had funded a part of the program. We are looking for help to answer the question: How can social media outreach and awareness of our approach be mode more systematic?

Monitoring and Evaluation:  In the non profit world especially in India, reporting on outcomes in virtually non existent. Major emphasis is on inputs: children enrolled, books or computers distributed, meals provided. School specific and system wide data on simple easy to understand indicators such as rate of high school completion or quality of learning are not easily accessible.

We have started to change that by transparently and regularly reporting on achievement of promised outcomes: high school completion, getting into jobs and earnings.

But even these outcome indicators, which go beyond the norm, do not capture the transformation in lives that we are seeking. We are looking for help to deepen our work in this area.

Till June 6th when in India's national media, our efforts were hailed for bridging the digital divide, we would not have thought to saying yes to being considered.

Now, we believe we are qualified for the prize because we successfully brought 700 girls living in poverty out of the darkness of the slum into the bright world of digital learning, not allowing poverty and COVID lockdown to deprive them of the very education they need to get out of poverty. 

Within a short period of 2 months we

a. screened all technology available in the market to promote digital learning and trained teachers to use the selected platforms.

b. understood the social dynamics in a slum home where the male child takes preference to design a system to ensure that devices taken home by the girls are indeed used by them for schooling.

c. Continued to add offerings to enable regular learning assessments and customized self learning  modules to catch up and go beyond.

Yes, we do believe that we have advanced digital equity in our schools in such a forceful way that it may have led Governments to seriously consider adding digital literacy in all government schools.

Should we be rewarded, we will use the prize as follows:

25% - 50% depending upon amount, distributed to team members in the field who were instrumental in implementing the program;

50% - 75% to fund additional efforts to bridge the digital divide at 2 new schools being accredited in 2021.

Girls in our schools are daughters of slum dwellers. They face demands to do chores at home, look after siblings o to earn a meager income on the side. They are low priority for any family resources.  

They have no voice at home, leave alone in society.

Our COVID Action Agenda (CAA) gave them a sense of empowerment because they were the instrument of family survival during the lock down bringing in rations for the entire family. Then they stood out with their new personal digital device to learn. Mothers felt empowered when some of them became paid mentors to the little ones.

This required innovation.

First, to weave available technologies into a package suited for a girl living in poverty. We screened hardware and software options not only to deliver officially prescribed syllabus, but also to promote self learning and acquire leadership skills.

Secondly, we dealt with the complex social issues in a slum home where the girl faces the risk that any digital device given to her would  be usurped by males in the family.

Thanks to CAA, our girls now have a voice not just at home but in the community and with our increased emphasis on all leadership development, they will soon be leaders in society with a strong and principled voice for equity.

Should we get the prize, we will add new modules to our Leadership Development Program ( Elocution, Time management, Conflict Resolution, Team Building, Mindfulness, Building Self-Esteem and Developing a Strong Identity.)