Using solar powered projectors, Barefoot College will show 'He Named Me Malala' to 2,000 children who attend its rural night schools in Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Karnataka. At least 80% of these students are girls. We will have discussion groups and document everything with remote solar connectivity and iPads. As in Indian elections, every supporter will have her finger marked: this will designate support and create awareness of girls' rights for proper education.
There are 200 million illiterate women in India. Marginalized girls and women are not given equal opportunities to learn throughout rural communities in India. The main reasons are that the families prefer girls and women stay home taking care of the family, giving birth to more babies, working or simply because they prefer to give the educational opportunities to the men in the family. The situation is strongly reinforced because of a lack of awareness of women's educational rights.
We will 1) launch a screening series, followed by a creative interpretation of the film via traditional/local storytelling techniques and sharing with the community, 2) hold advocacy-training workshops for girls to become their own advocates for their education, and 3) gain press support and coverage for the ability of grassroots organisations using renewable energy to spread large scale messaging and awareness campaigns.
We will gain the support of influencers and decision makers involved in girls' education and girls' rights to push for free, safe, quality secondary education and catalyse grassroots support to collaborate in the pursuit of girls' rights to education. There is a great disparity in the literacy rate between women and men, 65.46% and 80% respectively (2011). The project has a strong potential to address this issue by igniting a "collective consciousness" about women's rights to education.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
