Hybrid Digital Ecosystem for Girls

An estimated 13 million more child marriages and 20 million school dropouts for girls will take place due to COVID-19 on top of growing economic hardships, violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, unintended pregnancy. We propose to develop an agile and intelligent low cost system which uses both smartphone and interactive voice response system (IVRS) assisted technology to bring together girl students, parents and teachers. This unifying digital ecosystem aims to do three things: 1) engage parents with their daughters’ education using IVRS, parents get regular updates about their daughter’s schooling progress and well-being), 2) connect parents and teachers through virtual school management committees and 3) connect schools to form a national network committed to empowering girls via internet assisted platforms to discuss school policies, trainings on life skills and digital literacy. Even if girls completed just secondary school, it could add up to $30 trillion to the global economy.

About 10m girls may not return to school when they reopen after the second wave of COVID-19 (CBGA, 2020). Furthermore, there will be an increase of more than 30 million child brides in the next decade globally, due to COVID-19 (UNESCO). Girls aged 12-17 are at particular risk of dropping out of school (India Education Diary, 2021). Reports have also indicated the loss of friendship networks, or access to opportunities to play and meet friends that schools offered, which is rare for rural adolescent girls(Population Foundation of India, 2020; Upadhyay, 2020).

Our data with rural girls shows that they spent more time on household chores during COVID lockdowns and 69% were declined help from their brothers. Additionally, 80% reported that the men at their home mostly access mobile phones and even when they are allowed to access technology, a majority admitted it was for a maximum of 30 minutes. Majority of Girls do not get to interact with friends since the school closed which is exacerbated due to restricted access to technology to get in touch with friends. 55% of the Girls reported to be sad and hopeless, while 43 % of them are anxious about the future. 

The ultimate goal of our project is to convert a situation of crisis into an opportunity to bring historically marginalized girls and women of rural India to the forefront of digital education, inclusion and empowerment by creating an IVRS-smartphone based digital ecosystem of students, parents, teachers and schools.

We propose to build a hybrid solution which uses both the internet but also Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) for areas where internet does not work. This system brings together the parents and the school together for the first time with the promise of keeping girls' education at the centre. This can scale up to ~4000 KGBV schools across the country to build a network.

 Using a hybrid version of both internet and non-internet assisted technology, we want to create a unifying ecosystem for young marginalized girls in India prone to early marriage. This ecosystem does three things: 1) engages parents with their daughters’ education, 2) connects parents, teachers and government officials through virtual school management committees (SMCs) and 3) connects schools to form a national network committed to tackling girls' education in India. 

In rural patriarchal areas, our girls operate under strict gender norms and 95% report that their decision makers are always adults. Also, most girls are first-generation learners. 35% of the girls said their mothers had education till grade 8, 23% with mother’s education till grade 10, and 31% with mother’s education till grade 12. 36% of the girls had fathers who had passed grade 8, and 32% had fathers with no education at all. There can be two justifications for this data. In terms of household asset ownership, while 67% girls had a television at home, only 34% had any form of computer or laptop or tablet at home. 13% of the girls were hungry at least one time in the past week and 4% were hungry almost every day of the week. Our need assessment shows that in terms of family occupations, more than 50% of the mothers did not work outside of homes and the main professions of the fathers were either daily wage workers, vehicle drivers or small shop owners. The average family size was 12 members. 

SwaTaleem takes a systems approach and works with special schools called the KGBVs which are a unique public school system in India established by the central government to provide access to quality education to the girls belonging to unprivileged sections of the society namely the low socio-economic background, scheduled castes, tribal populations and religious minorities. These schools are established in educationally backward blocks throughout the country in regions where child marriage is also very high. We work in communities where female literacy is 32% and internet reach is below 50% due to gendered access to technology.  

In addition to building competence in academics and life skills in schools, our digital ecosystem educates parents and teachers around digital and financial literacy, health, the changing nature of work, and the value of empowering girls to dream and be economically independent. 

Our program will reach 5000 families to digitally train them for  continuous parental engagement of 5000 girls and help in establishing a school network for around 30 schools to exchange best practices in girl empowerment and economic independence. 

The COVID-pandemic will result in 30m more child brides globally and 10m girls will drop out of school in India alone. By bringing together girls, parents and school for the first time and investing in their digital and financial literacies among other life skills, we would enable them to participate in the digital economy while promising to keep girls' education at the centre.

We piloted the solution with 900 girls and aim to reach 5000 girls and their families and 30 schools in the coming months. Ensuring 5000 girls complete secondary schooling would add up to $1billion in India’s GDP.

We successfully piloted the IVRS with 900 historically under-represented girls in the Mewat and Panipat districts of Haryana, India, and aim to reach 5000 girls and their families and 30 schools in the coming month. Additionally, digital and financial literacy programs for mothers and teachers will help us create a multi-generational impact.

The proposed hybrid model works in extremely low resource settings by reducing the program cost by 60% and is inclusive of all stakeholders (bringing them at the same platform for the first time) to ensure a girl gets educated in a sustained manner.

In the past 30 years, 67% programs on girl empowerment have not been sustainable because of a lack of community ownership and extensive costs incurred. Our work is a result of a bottom-up community identified needs supported by a passionate, credible and skilled team to provide low cost innovative and sustainable solutions. The proposed hybrid model works in extremely low resource settings by reducing the program cost by 60% and is inclusive of all stakeholders (bringing them at the same platform for the first time) to ensure a girl gets educated in a sustained manner.This work focuses on responses towards long term impacts of the COVID crisis in the country and is critical at present given the looming threat of a 3rd COVID wave in India, which has already devastated the country, with a heightened impact on 117m girls of India, who today have a bleak future.  

We are working directly with 900 Girls and 900 Parents along with the school staff and leadership of 6 schools.

In 1 year we plan to scale up and stabilize the model for 4,500 Girls, their parents, and school staff and leadership of 30 schools.

In 5 years, we aim to scale up to 90, 000 Girls, their parents, and school staff and leadership of 120 schools.

Impact evaluation is our core strength and we would employ quantitative and qualitative methods to understand project performance. KPIs will include indicators like percentage of all stakeholders (girls, both parents, teachers and schools) reached monthly in Haryana; percentage of all stakeholders engaging in the program, percentage of all stakeholders represented in the advisory board, amount of feedback received and acted upon by the program, percentage of girls passing individual grades and continuing education (i.e. percentage reduction in drop outs), percentage of girls with increased levels of digital and financial literacy. We would also map and calculate changes in personal well-being and aspirations of girls, perception of parents towards daughters' education, increased agency and autonomy of girls over time as well as increased parental engagement in school accountability, the best practices exchanged between schools and percentage of girls who used the platform as a safe medium of expression.

Full time - 5

Part Time - 2

Contrators - 2

SwaTaleem has been working for the past three years with a team of over 30 years of work experience from disciplines like Engineering, Neuroscience to Psychology and Design, along with a direct collaboration with the local communities. The inroads to the community of girls, schools, teachers and parents are well-developed, along with a multiyear scalable MoU with the Government to scale the project. During COVID-19 relief work, as part of the state collective, our community connections have strengthened. Humane Warriors is a 40+ member team, representing a wide Indian diaspora across 5 countries, with the majority coming from STEM backgrounds. The team actively fundraises and supports education-equity in schools and communities in rural and under-resourced parts of India. Additionally, this project has a completely women-led team that represents a diverse set of members who are actively breaking stereotypes in leading technology-related solutions for gender empowerment in the Global South.

As the 2nd wave of COVID hit, we quickly pivoted to disseminating customised COVID awareness and mobilization of resources by getting government officials involved at all levels. We also began a well-being program for girls online. Our partner, Humane Warriors, raised more than $150,000 to provide hunger relief and oxygen cylinders to people in India as they battled the pandemic. They also provided scholarships and mentorship to 100 students, created a new e-learning centre running on solar power and a context based digital curriculum to work with it.

SwaTaleem has 80% women in leadership positions, many of who have themselves rose from humble backgrounds amidst gender discrimination. Additionally, SwaTaleem deliberately recruits and trains local women from Haryana villages, invests in their skill-building to drive the project at a community level, thereby creating economic opportunities in the operations as well. Since these communities are extremely conservative, we invest in building relationships with their families as part of recruitment and onboarding. When these women visit young girls in communities and schools, they act as their role models for the independence and empowerment that the girls aspire towards. One of the co-founders is a woman scholar and non-profit leader in the field of gender and education. Our mentors include UNICEF’s principal advisor on gender and we are supported by University of Illinois Gender and Education departments as well as National education body (NCERT) in India.

In addition to the funding, first, we would be keen on seeking help from the MIT Solve community and partners on dealing with data security in a sensitive and ethical manner to protect stakeholders who belong to a historically marginalized population. We are already in the process of reviewing platform policy, but would value help from others  to review it at an advanced level. For example, to decide how long we can store data in the system, how will identifiers be separated and anonymity maintained, and how can we create credible insights without individual case identification through intent signals. Second, since the MIT Solve community may have access to a strong engineering team, we would value help in technical expertise consultations in relation to the platform on a need basis. Third, in order to pilot, test and understand user experience, the partners through MIT Solve community can help us in replication and scaling the project with its reach and existing channels, and we can learn extensively from other organizations’ best practices.

Same as above.

In addition to the funding, first, we would be keen on seeking help from the MIT Solve community and partners on dealing with data security in a sensitive and ethical manner to protect stakeholders who belong to a historically marginalized population. We are already in the process of reviewing platform policy, but would value help from others  to review it at an advanced level. For example, to decide how long we can store data in the system, how will identifiers be separated and anonymity maintained, and how can we create credible insights without individual case identification through intent signals. Second, since the MIT Solve community may have access to a strong engineering team, we would value help in technical expertise consultations in relation to the platform on a need basis. Third, in order to pilot, test and understand user experience, the partners through MIT Solve community can help us in replication and scaling the project with its reach and existing channels, and we can learn extensively from other organizations’ best practices.

We would be keen on seeking help from the MIT Solve community and partners on dealing with data security in a sensitive and ethical manner to protect stakeholders who belong to a historically marginalized population. We are already in the process of reviewing platform policy, but would value help from others  to review it at an advanced level. For example, to decide how long we can store data in the system, how will identifiers be separated and anonymity maintained, and how can we create credible insights without individual case identification through intent signals. Second, since the MIT Solve community may have access to a strong engineering team, we would value help in technical expertise consultations in relation to the platform on a need basis.

We work towards increasing decision making and foundational skills in under-represented adolescent girls by implementing a transformative design process where teachers, learners and community leaders choose and address educational challenges in schools. In doing so, we want to develop schools that provide high quality education for a better future of underrepresented adolescent girls.

Through this project, we want to create sustainable technological solutions for girls to pursue education and independent respectful lives in future. Aligning with our lifespan approach for gender empowerment, this project caters to all major decision making stakeholders around a girl and enables them to support her move ahead.

 We propose to develop an agile and intelligent low cost system which uses both smartphone and interactive voice response system (IVRS) assisted technology to bring together girl students, parents and teachers. This unifying digital ecosystem aims to do three things: 1) engage parents with their daughters’ education using IVRS, parents get regular updates about their daughter’s schooling progress and well-being), 2) connect parents and teachers through virtual school management committees and 3) connect schools to form a national network committed to empowering girls via internet assisted platforms to discuss school policies, trainings on life skills and digital literacy.

The ultimate goal of our project is to convert a situation of crisis (COVID-19 pandemic) into an opportunity to bring historically marginalized girls and women of rural India to the forefront of digital education, inclusion and empowerment by creating an IVRS-smartphone based digital ecosystem of students, parents, teachers and schools.

We work towards increasing decision making and foundational skills in under-represented adolescent girls by implementing a transformative design process where teachers, learners and community leaders choose and address educational challenges in schools. In doing so, we want to develop schools that provide high quality education for a better future of underrepresented adolescent girls.

Through this project, we want to create sustainable technological solutions for girls to pursue education and independent respectful lives in future. Aligning with our lifespan approach for gender empowerment, this project caters to all major decision making stakeholders around a girl and enables them to support her move ahead.

 We propose to develop an agile and intelligent low cost system which uses both smartphone and interactive voice response system (IVRS) assisted technology to bring together girl students, parents and teachers. This unifying digital ecosystem aims to do three things: 1) engage parents with their daughters’ education using IVRS, parents get regular updates about their daughter’s schooling progress and well-being), 2) connect parents and teachers through virtual school management committees and 3) connect schools to form a national network committed to empowering girls via internet assisted platforms to discuss school policies, trainings on life skills and digital literacy.

 The ultimate goal of our project is to convert a situation of crisis (COVID-19 pandemic) into an opportunity to bring historically marginalized girls and women of rural India to the forefront of digital education, inclusion and empowerment by creating an IVRS-smartphone based digital ecosystem of students, parents, teachers and schools.