Girl Icon Program

There are about 120 million population of adolescent girls in India, a largely invisible population trapped in a society with socio-cultural practices and contrasting stages of development that leaves them powerless to make essential life choices. In India, 40% of adolescent girls drop out before completing secondary school, 27% of girls get married before their 18th birthday, a fifth of babies are born to girls aged 15-19, and 50% of maternal deaths occur among girls and young women aged 15-24.

These data are representative of the lives of millions of girls who live in the hinterland of the country, unable to break the shackles of social structural barriers of patriarchy, poverty, and gender-regressive social norms. In order to address this intergenerational gender inequality deep-rooted in poverty and patriarchy, it is imperative to invest in these adolescent girls to be educated, enabled, and empowered.

Milaan’s journey started in 2007 in India  with the education sector, with the Milaan School in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh. Within the initial years, we drew our attention to the vulnerable social position of adolescent girls. Our learnings from running the school in a rural village and non-formal educational centres for adolescent girls across 4 districts in Uttar Pradesh, persuaded us to go deeper to understand gender inequality in education and the need to work within the communities to address the social structural barriers to education for girls.

We consolidated our work in the traditional education delivery model. We pivoted to learn from our research the interconnecting issues, such as education, child marriage, sexual and reproductive health, and violence against women and girls, that impact girls’ education and identify geographies that are home to the largest number of school dropouts girls.

We believe if we are able to build grassroots girl leaders as role models with adequate knowledge, skills, and networks, we will be able to challenge and change the gender-regressive social narratives into one that encourages and supports girls to pursue education according to their desire and potential. With a sustainable support system, the girl leaders would slowly and steadily build pathways, narratives, and evidence, changing the intergenerational patriarchal mindsets for girls to build their own stories of aspirations, hope, and equality.

Milaan launched the Girl Icon Program in 2015, an 18-month leadership program that empowers adolescent girls by equipping them with life skills to build their agency and create pathways for girls to complete secondary education, delay early marriage, and control and make informed decisions about their reproductive health.

At its core, the Girl Icon Program intends to empower adolescent girls from the hinterlands of India to become grassroot leaders of their communities and become the harbingers of intergenerational change. Notably, many Girl Icons represent the first generation of girls within their communities to possess smartphone ownership. Through fortnightly life-skills, socio-emotional learning and leadership training sessions accessible via smartphones, Girl Icons are afforded the opportunity to enhance their knowledge, awareness, and critical skills such as negotiation and interpersonal communications from the comfort of their homes.

Each Girl Icon collectivises 20 peers in a group and creates safe spaces for them to learn, share, and advocate for their rights through weekly workshops. Together, the Girl Icon and her Peer Group identify an issue that impacts them the most and, through a Social Action Project (SAP), address the issue and sensitise a minimum of 100 community members - especially campaigns like ‘Path to Pathshala’ which actively council peer members and their guardians about the importance of secondary education and specifically targets school drop-outs. We also deeply engage with Parents and the young men in the community through the quarterly “Stronger Together Workshops”, where they learn about the program goals and how they can support girls in their empowerment journey. After completing the program, the Girl Icons are provided with a performance-based education scholarship of INR 10000 (~ $120). 

Each Girl Icon most importantly is also provided with a smartphone and internet data pack so they can attend the leadership sessions as well as open them to a world of information and agency. 

Ultimately through a combination of curriculum-based training, community engagement, leadership & socio-emotional development, and role-modelling delivered largely through mobile-technology to the initial Girl Icon, the Girl Icon Program aims to transform not only the individual lives of girls but also build community perceptions towards gender equity, creating an enabling environment for girls to realise their full potential. After completing the Girl Icon leadership journey with Milaan the girls join the Alumni Programme for five years, where they are supported with skills, information, and knowledge to help them transition into higher education or employment.

In the 8 years of the program, we have methodologically evolved the program with inputs from the Girl Icon. We worked with 5 cohorts, with over 5000 Girl Icons leaders who have led and educated over 100,000 adolescent girls, across 3 states of India - Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka. 

Milaan works in a system transformation approach to engage with the larger ecosystem, including the local government organisations - Department of Education, Adolescent Health, Women and Child Development at the State-level and District Administration in the target districts to advocate with the local government agencies to ensure that girls get access to schemes and provisions that can help in their overall development, such as scholarship programs, access to sanitary napkins, Iron and Zinc tablets, Child Protection services, etc.

The Girl Icon program, rooted in the guiding principles of "Leading self, Leading others, and Leading social change," represents an evidence informed endeavour aimed at nurturing the leadership potential of adolescent girls hailing from low-income families in rural geographies. Launched in 2015, this initiative is tailored to girls aged 12-18 years, offering them comprehensive life skills education while catalysing collective social actions on issues pertinent to adolescent girls.

Over an approximate 18-month cycle, Girl Icons assume leadership roles within their peer groups. Midway through the program, these girls collaboratively identify and address social barriers to education through the design and implementation of social action projects. To date, the initiative has yielded tangible results, with 5000 Girl Icons positively impacting over 100,000 adolescent girls and indirectly influencing approximately 20,00,000 community members through the execution of 2000+ social action projects.

Notably, in our impact assessments with IDinsight and Kantar Public, 94% of Girl Icons and 92% of Peer Girls are actively pursuing education, signalling a promising trajectory towards personal and intellectual enrichment. In a country like India where almost 80% of women lack any access to the internet, Girl Icons have total access to their smartphones and an array of digital tools. The Girls Icons also have very high email and WhatsApp usage, including active attendance of various Milaan’s as well as external virtual workshops and meeting through tools like Zoom and GMeet indicating a level of digital literacy and engagement rarely seen among girls from rural India.

Moreover, 92% of the Girl Icons are aware of their fundamental rights - including Right to Education and the illegible nature of marriage before the age of 18. Furthermore, 91% of them are also highly financially literate and have opened savings accounts with active deposits every month. Additionally, 91% of Girl Icons have accepted menstruation as a natural biological phenomena and are actively advocating in their communities to tackle taboos related to the same. 

Milaan Foundation has been working on the Girl Icon Program since 2015 and with adolescent girls since 2007. We harbour a close link with the community we invest in. Many of our own team members are from the community and were ex-Girl Icons themselves, including three full-time Program Coordinators as well as over 200 part-time Project Assistants who act as our field anchors and serve as mentors to our new cohorts of Girl Icons. This gives us a double edged sword- both community trust and a program design & implementation which is built by our primary stakeholders themselves.

We have a highly qualified program team with decades of experience in gender, monitoring & evaluation, people & culture, program management and fundraising. Perhaps testament to our dedication and impact is us winning grants and support from renowned organisations like Echidna, Sony Global Music Fund, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, Girl Rising, U-GO Scholarships, Ford Foundation etc. as well as collaboration with Kantar, University of California - Berkeley, Michigan State University and being the only Indian nonprofit to be mentioned by Obama Foundation. Our partners not only support us financially but also provide technical help and inputs which help better the programme.

Milaan was initially launched with the vision to tackle the epidemic of girls throughout Indian villages dropping out of schools even before completing their secondary education. But as the team spent more time with such rural communities, they understood that a traditional school model - even if free of cost for the girls - will not help eliminate the multi-complexities of gender-regressive ideals. Hence in 2015, we decided to pivot into a cascading model with our now flagship Girl Icon Programme.

Initially working with a small cohort of 500 adolescent girls in rural Uttar Pradesh and their 20-peer girls each, we launched a 18-month leadership programme which is designed to leverage everyday mobile-technology, community role-modelling, and leadership skills. From there, we have grown to work with 5000 adolescent girls in three different states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka as well as the original Uttar Pradesh. With additional 100,000 peer adolescent girls positively affected and transforming entire communities with a total of 20,00,000 residents. In our mission to give back the agency to young women as well as enable them to become grassroot leaders; we have seen continuously that an average of 92% of our Girl Icons have resumed their education, rejected marriage before 18 and are equipped themselves for meaningful careers. Another note of importance is working with adolescent girls from the tribal communities of Madhya Pradesh - a state with the largest tribal population in India; as well as understanding the socioeconomic dynamics of such marginalised sections along with members of India’s unique Scheduled Castes.

We have also actively partnered with district-level authorities but as we scale, we would like to steadily solicit the support of the states’ as well as our nation's central government. Our vision is to deliver and implement our Girl Icon Program across India, reaching out to 10 Million adolescent girls acoss diversified rural communities by 2030 and for this we are striving to reach out to bigger impact entities - governmental, for-profit and nonprofit.

For our next stage of our growth, we plan to enable 1 Million adolescent girls to become grassroot leaders bringing out intergenerational change in their communities. For the same, we have realised that positioning our foundation at a global stage will be a necessity. MIT Slove will give us the chance to pitch our solution to an array of domain experts and investors, as well as give us the opportunity to network with fellow participants to learn & unlearn from their own solution development and challenges. We are primarily focused on developing better MEL best practices as well as implementation of & innovation in everyday ICT usage like mobile-technology to bring about long-lasting social change.

Every few social impact firms have ever concentrated particularly on adolescent girls despite evidence showing how critical it is a time in human-development when it comes to decision-making and social growth. Milaan’s niche is not only understanding the power of youth and gender through enabling adolescent girls through a 18-month leadership programme but the unique blend of delivery itself. We have envisioned the Girl Icon Programme as a community-based and cascade model so the impact remains even after our exit with each and every member of the community themselves becoming the catalysts of change.

We blend everyday mobile-technology, mentorship, role-modelling, leadership curriculum and active community advocacy to generate repel effect which not only creates adolescent girls to be grassroot leaders enabling intergenerational change in their communities but also inspire their peers and even the larger community to become proactive about social change for good. The team understands the stigmatised perception towards young women with phones from the rural communities in India and the reality of the larger global digital economies, which create an extreme socioeconomic dichotomy. Developing a leadership module delivered through digital tools addresses the gender digital divide and promotes accessibility to free smartphones and year-long data packs; otherwise inconceivable for such marginalised communities - goes a long way in addressing and eliminating several layers of gender-regressive norms.

We already have done impact evaluations about the repel effect that Girl Icon Programme has throughout the lives on 5000 existing Girl Icons with 100,000 Peer Members along with the larger 20,000,000 community residents throughout the last 8 years. This has been done with renowned names like IDinsight and Kantar Public, both of whom state that about 94% of our Girl Icons and 92% of our Peer Girls are actively participating in some form of higher education. With 91% of Girl Icons actively using digital tools in their day-to-day life like joining and conversing in WhatsApp groups, using Zoom and GMeet for daily meetings or joining workshops, and even for professional mailing. Additionally, it has been observed that over 90% of our Girl Icons have an active savings account with monthly deposits done.

Milaan has developed a comprehensive in-house program management technology-based tool to enable Girl Icons to collect real-time data on the ground garnered by our Project Assistants who were our ex-Girl Icons, enabling the program team to respond effectively and efficiently to the implementation challenges. We have also developed parameters for the attendance and active participation of the selected Girl Icons in their leadership sessions, as well as their guidance and mentorship of their 20-membered peers for each Girl Icon. Furthermore, we take into account their own personal growth in terms of aspirations towards higher education, meaningful careers as well as their success in completing their Social Action Project for a number of topics of choice - Menstruation, WASH, Education, Child-Marriage among other social causes which should reach at least 100 of their community members. Additional data-gathering and analysis is also being done to understand how our Girl Icons are implementing the ‘Path to Pathshala’ campaign to re-enroll school-dropouts in their communities.

Intended Programmatic Outcomes for our next target of creating 50,000 more Girl Icons by 2026:

Continuation of Secondary Education: 85% of girls will continue from primary to secondary and secondary to senior secondary school. Girls are aware of career choices, scholarships, and government schemes.

Prevention of Child Marriage: 90% of girls will report in  increase in knowledge of the laws regarding child marriage and dowry, and describe their legal rights as adolescent girls to prevent child marriage. 

Gender-based Discrimination and Violence: 70% of girls recognize gender-based discrimination and violence in the family and their communities as unacceptable and unconstitutional. 

Increase awareness of Adolescent Health: 80% of girls show increased awareness of their sexual and reproductive health services and are enabled to manage their menstruation hygienically and with dignity.

We are also currently investing to build a robust MEL program after collaborating with IDinsight and getting a funding of about $900,000 from Echidna by forming a team with our Associate Director already being hired and awaiting our State Officers to join in soon as well.

We use the simplest of everyday ICT solutions like mobile-technology and solve at a delivery-first and an accessibility level by providing each and every Girl Icon with a free smartphone and a 18-month month data pack. In a country like India, where 80% of our women never have any access to the internet - the monstrosity of gender-divide as a phenomena is hardly tackled especially for adolescent girls by social impact agencies. 

Even our selections are done purely through virtual calls through Zoom and GMeet, and orientation to digital literacy for each and every Girl Icon aspirant on the field by our Project Assistants. The Project Assistants form WhatsApp groups with the aspirants and acclimatise to the world of digital literacy. While the fortnightly pedagogy of leadership is done through virtual sessions by the in-office Training team, it is the partnership with Project Assistant who are themselves ex-Girl Icons who check-in physically and frequently to mentor them as well as make them comfortable about technology, along with counselling the parents as well as the larger community. It is particularly necessary especially in countries like India where there is still a huge stigma associated with girls having access to a phone and a notion which caters to isolating womxn from the larger society which is believed to be the domain of men.

At Milaan, we understand the socioeconomic complexities with adopting technology and making everyday digital tools available to those who need it the best - especially utilising the same simple solutions to change the communities for better.

Full-time - 115

Part-time - 200+

Milaan Foundation was founded in 2007, initially a single-roomed brick-walled school in rural Uttar Pradesh which gave us a sense of the issues facing adolescents in those geographies. We launched the Girl Icon Programme in 2015 as our flagship initiative; understanding the need for a solution which directly addresses the multi-layered complexities of gender-regressive norms and enabling adolescent girls to become grassroot leadership of their own communities catalysing change within them.

Milaan Foundation has over 80% of employees who identify as women, along with most of our program staff belonging to the very communities that the nonprofit serves. We also regularly recruit our Girl Icon alumnae as Project Assistants, Associate Program Coordinators and Program Coordinators; ensuring that the program team is spearheaded by the representatives of the served communities themselves. 

We also have a stringent policy which bars any discrimination against minorities - sex, ethnicities, caste, religion, gender or sexuality; and highly encourages folx from LGBTQIA+, women, Dalit and Tribal communities to join our teams. 

Milaan Foundation is a non-profit organization working to build the voice, choice, and power of adolescent girls from socially and economically marginalized communities in India. Since 2015, Milaan has been implementing the Girl Icon Program - a comprehensive life skills program that empowers adolescent girls from marginalized communities to complete secondary education, delay early marriage, and make informed decisions about reproductive health.

Many government agencies and non-government organizations in India have implemented interventions and programs for girls' and women's empowerment. Evidence suggests that, in low and middle-income countries, interventions and programs that address the barriers to girls' education and empower them have shown promising results in delaying pregnancy, improving educational outcomes, and enhancing girls' access to opportunities.

However, barriers to empowerment are multifold and complex. Often, they are deep-rooted in gender-regressive social norms that are hard to change.

Through a combination of curriculum-based training, community engagement, leadership development, and role-modeling, the Girl Icon Program aims to transform not only the individual lives of girls but also build community perceptions towards gender equity, creating an enabling
environment for girls to realize their full potential. In the current cohort, the Girl Icon Program is training 5000 Girl Icons, who are leading and educating 100,000 adolescent girls in their communities across three states of India - Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka. By, Milaan plans to scale their cohort to 50,000 more Girl Icons, reaching 100,000 peers girls in their communities.

As the program grows, Milaan's vision is to build Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems and processes that (a) inform the design and implementation of the Girl Icon Program and (b) capture the impact of the program on the outcomes of interest at Girl Icon and community levels. 

Our major stakeholders are the Girl Icon themselves who often are recruited to become the part of our official program teams as well as our individual and institutional donors, as well as members of the community whose lives have also been positively impacted through the program and lastly our supporters from the local grassroot nonprofits as well as the government officials.

The Milaan Foundation is a nonprofit based in India and provides services to our stakeholders at no personal cost. 

The Girl Icon Program also has a diversified funding model, with contributions from individual donors, corporate sponsors, and foundations including The Hans Foundation, Echidna Giving, Sony Music, Ayati Charity, State Street Foundation, Reliance Foundation, Paytm Bank, etc. We will continue to expand our fundraising efforts globally through more high-impact donation campaigns, major gifts & institutional grant solicitations as well as partnerships with various impact-minded entities like UC Berkeley and Michigan State University to determine the program’s sustainability.