By Team | Educate Girls
Today, even after 70 years of independence, archaic traditions still continue to be practiced in a small village in Rajasthan. People’s outlook towards girls’ education there is still negative. If the topic of a girl’s education arises, parents shrug it away saying, “What benefit will it give her or us? She will eventually go to her in-laws’ after marriage. Once married, her responsibilities will revolve around doing household chores, assist in farming or the like, raise children and take care of her family. That’s all.”
Belonging to a family that had the same line of thought was a young girl named Poonam*. Her family was quite poor and her parents worked as laborers. Poonam was responsible for taking the cattle grazing. She went to school at the age of 7. However, owing to family conditions, she couldn’t go any longer and dropped out of school.
While conducting the door-to-door survey to identify out-of-school girls, Educate Girls’ Field coordinator Ekling found Poonam. So he reached out to Poonam’s parents and tried convincing them to send her to school and explained to them the benefits of educating a girl. Educate Girls Team Balika (Community Volunteer) Kamlesh also approached her parents, however, even after multiple attempts they didn’t agree.
Finally, he asked the School Principal for help and with his added influence, her parents agreed to send Poonam to school. Today, owing to the efforts of the school and of Educate Girls, Poonam enjoys going to school. The learning curriculum developed by Educate Girls’ has helped Poonam not only to catch up with the learning she missed out on due to dropping out, but also in improving on her fundamental concepts across Hindi, English and Math.
[The learning curriculum developed by Educate Girls is named as Gyaan Ka Pitara (GKP) which translated into 'Repository of Knowledge'. It is designed with the help of pedagogy and child psychology experts. It include easy to grasp graphic and activity-based tools and around 250 practice worksheets for every child that are aimed at improving learning outcomes for all children across Hindi, English and Math.]
*Name changed to protect identity of the minor
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