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In the developing world, education is the best way for her to escape the vicious cycle of childhood marriage, pre-teen pregnancy and domestic abuse. When she goes to school, she lives a healthier life, earns more, and makes her community stronger. Educated girls like her are crucial to erasing global poverty and minimizing conflict, and the world needs them now, more than ever!
when she goes to school
amazing things happen
to her
School gives her the critical thinking needed to form informed opinions, and the confidence to voice them when it counts. If she completes middle school, she is 4 times less likely to get married off as a child! Her children are twice as likely to live past the age of 5, while she is 3 times more likely to survive childbirth.
TO HER COMMUNITY
She will earn twice as much and invest 90% of it back into her family. She will send her daughters to school and act as the role-model that she never had. She, and her classmates, will decrease the likelihood of alcoholism and domestic abuse in her village. They will make her community more tolerant and open-minded.
TO THE WORLD
When women learn, they are more likely to earn. And their earnings, according to the World Bank, is a key to ending global poverty. They reduce the risk of conflict and war, by 50%, according to the Malala fund. The Brookings institute thinks educating girls is one of the most effective ways to fight climate change.
Several times a year, we visit the schools we support to see the impact first-hand. The girls in these programs fight all odds to be there because of a burning desire to stand on their own two feet in life. They are there often against the wishes of their parents and community, and in some cases, their husbands and in-laws. Meeting these courageous girls and hearing their stories has been an indescribably uplifting experience. Here are a few of our rockstars...
Pali
Pali belongs to a goat-herding community in rural Rajasthan. At the age of 14, she was widowed when her husband died in an accident. Fast forward to today, seven years later, she is the only one her in community who can read or write and is on her way to be the first one to complete high school. Her sights are set for college.
Pali's Story
Nina
Nina lives in the infamous Sector-37 slums of New Delhi. Her dad forced her older sister to give up dreams for an arranged marriage at the age of 14. Determined to study, she stood up to her dad and with the help of her teachers, she completed her high school. She now works at an optometry clinic and has made a believer of her dad.
Nina's Story
Nisha
Nisha's parents pulled her out of school in her 5th grade and for 3 years Nisha did house chores and tended the family fields. A 3-year gap in learning usually means the end of school for adolescents like her, but not for Nisha. After working her tail off in a residential boot-camp, and passing all the tests, she is back in high school.
Nisha's Story
Pooja
When her dad passed away, Pooja’s mom couldn’t afford to send all her 3 children to school so her brothers went to school while she stayed at home. One of Pooja’s teachers was able to get her a scholarship that helped her complete high school. Today, Pooja teaches 30 underprivileged kids, like her, daily in her backyard while working on a Bachelors degree in Elementary Education because he wants to be a full-time teacher.
Sushma
Sushma’s dad has not been in her life for years. Scared at the prospect of another mouth to feed, her mom tried to marry her o when she turned 15. The teachers at her school successfully intervened. Today, her mom not only wants her to go on and get a job, but Sushma has helped her mom sue her dad for unpaid child support.
Sushma's Story
Rathi
At 17, Rathi is practically the head of her family which includes her sick mother and 13 younger siblings. She is determined to help her family break out of the crippling poverty and debt. She knows that getting an education is her only shot at achieving this, and thanks to an intense 6-week residential camp, she is now studying to pass her high school exams and find a job.
Rathi's Story10% of every purchase (~50% of our profits) directly go to girls education programs. Each of these programs targets a specific obstacle in each community that prevents girls from going to school.
WHAT OUR PROGRAMS DO
Fight Gender Inequity
Nearly 3 million girls in rural India are out of school. They have free access to government schools but centuries-old deep-rooted traditional beliefs stand in the way - beliefs about the role of a girl in her family and in society. We fund programs that employ every trick in the book - awareness campaigns, amateur psychology skills, local knowledge and experience - to get girls into school. They typically increase enrollments in entire villages to 90% within months.
Re-integrate Drop-outs
Child marriage and household labor force many girls out of school. For these teens - their way back to school gets harder with each missed year. Some of our funded programs are intense bootcamps that get girls up to the academic literacy needed for them to rejoin school. Other programs help girls who have practical barriers to attending school (such as caring for a newborn) by staffing community learning centers that provide a continuing learning alternative.
Provide Infrastructure
Many schools are severely underfunded and lack the most basic amenities such as classrooms, books, and basic sanitary facilities. We provide bridge funds to local non-profit partners so that they can take on infrastructure projects such as construction of classrooms and libraries. We also direct fund wages of teachers where it can directly impact enrollments. Sometimes, the addition of just a single teacher in a school can have a huge impact on attendance.
Each quarter, we seek out worthy projects and partners to invest in. These are typically highly effective local non-profit organizations or innovative schools or in rare cases, a single inspiring individual that's re-shaping the entire community through sheer will and passionate belief. These are our currently active programs.
Educate Girls works in 4,500 villages of India, covering 8,000 schools in areas where 40% of girls leave school before completing 5th grade. Their award-winning model has enrolled nearly 100,000 girls to date, and includes local young women volunteers work with a girl, her parents and her community leaders to break the social barriers keeping her from school. These volunteers also serve as mentors and tutors, helping girls stay in school.
Doosra Dashak addresses the learning needs of adolescents in rural areas through residential camps that bring out-of-school kids up to the level of academic literacy; and community centers that provide a continuing learning alternative. They have impacted 60,000 adolescents in the last 15 years. Bloom & Give funds Samrathpura, Leedi and Pisangan community centers and the Mangliyawas residential camp
Vidya and Child operates 5 learning centers that support 700 underprivileged drop-outs. Mainstream school is no longer an option for many of these girls who were once pulled out either to get married, or to help with domestic labor. The curriculum at Vidya & Child has been specifically augmented with counseling and vocational training to equip girls with skills needed to earn a livelihood after school. Bloom & Give provide 100% funding to 80 girls across three of their schools.
Bramble runs alternative learning spaces for girls in rural Nigeria, where they can find their passion for learning through the use of play and creative resources. Through a self-learning curriculum, teachers at Bramble aim to foster creativity and critical thinking in children. Bloom & Give provides full operational funding for the entire center of 10 students.
Prerna is a high school program for over 800 underprivileged girls at the Study Hall school. These girls are born into communities that systematically reinforce gender discrimination. Besides teaching Math and Science, teachers here use real-life re-enactments to help their girls to first 'unlearn' gender discrimination, and then to recognize and resist it in their lives. Bloom & Give provides 100% funding to a class of 29 girls in Lucknow, and to a class of 45 girls in a nearby village.
The Leedi village community center is the unofficial “school” for village girls between the ages of 11 and 20 who’ve dropped out of school. Here, they learn math, science and language skills. The center is equipped with computers, a library and teaching staff and has an additional important goal to prepare 50 of these girls to enroll in the open schooling system and re-enter the mainstream. Bloom & Give has been funding this center since 2017.
The Samrathpura village community learning center provides alternative continuing learning to drop-outs who are not able to attend school due to practical constraints (caring for their babies, household help etc.). Girls come to this center to get basic education and training in health, gender sensitivity, religious harmony and personal cleanliness, to help them take charge of their lives with dignity. Bloom & Give has been funding this center since 2016.
The Mangala School serves 15 tribal villages in the southern state of Karnataka. Due to a severe funding shortage, the school faces a big problem of attrition of students and teachers. Vanam Foundation, a non-profit organization provides funding to the school to help hire teachers, build classrooms and buy teaching supplies. Bloom & Give has been supporting Vanam since 2016.
We continually monitor our programs for effectiveness. Several times a year, we visit the schools and villages to see the impact first-hand. In these visits, every single girl we talked to has told us that school is the favorite part of her life, and that she wants to keep on studying. Their smiling faces are our truest source of motivation to remain committed to our mission.