Supporting 250 underprivileged girl students from marginalized communities

Description of project: Supporting 250 underprivileged girl students at Prerna Girls School (a unit of Study Hall Educational Foundation)

Implementing Agency: Direct

Aim:

The financial support will ensure education for underprivileged girls from marginalized communities in Gomti Nagar, Lucknow (India). The school works with a vision to one day create a world where everyone is educated for gender equality, social justice, personal flourishing and active democratic citizenship.

Objectives:

• The students learn to recognize themselves as equal individuals.
• Students emerge with a sense of agency, have control over their life, have aspirations for their future, and have the confidence and the skills to realize them.
• Gain a critical understanding of the social and political structures that frame their life and determine its limits and possibilities, which would, in turn, enable her to push the boundaries and reconstruct her life in more empowering ways.
• Learn to read, write, and successfully complete the government-mandated syllabus up to twelfth grade.

Beneficiaries

• a) Direct
  1. Prerna’s definition of a high-quality education takes a broader approach. There is a focus on girls’ lives, not just their learning. Using a feminist, rights-based approach and critical feminist pedagogy, Prerna makes the empowerment of its students its primary educational goal. Girls learn to examine the gendered power structures, and challenge and transform existing social relations and social structures. While girls are expected to come, attend regularly, stay, complete, and learn, Prerna understands that these necessary goals are by no means sufficient to ensure better life outcomes or achieve the larger societal objective of gender equality. A high-quality education for girls must include—and perhaps prioritize—a strong focus on their empowerment. It must enable them to develop self-esteem and see themselves as equal persons, worthy of respect, possessing human dignity and the right to equal participation in society. Prerna focuses on developing girls’ capacity to aspire, to speak up for themselves with a strong voice, to challenge discriminatory structures, and to be capable agents and drivers of their own lives.
• b) Indirect
  1. Parents: Parents are directly engaged in the education process of their girls and are able to contribute to it. Prerna runs a parent club where fathers are encouraged to participate, and the teachers align them with the aspirations of their child.
  2. Community: The school conducts an annual girls’ campaign in the communities advocating for girls’ rights.

Activity Description:

• a. Curricular Activities
  1. Classroom Teaching Learning
  2. Progress Assessment of Students
  3. Critical Dialogue
• b. Co-curricular Activities
  1. Art & craft / music / dance activities
  2. Physical education activities
  3. Capacity building and gender training of teachers
  4. Parent Teacher Meetings
  5. Events and celebrating special days
  6. Community meetings
  7. Annual campaign advocating for girls’ rights