Back to School for Good: How Educate Girls Reached 10,000 Out-of-School Girls in Rajasthan

Back to School for Good: How Educate Girls Reached 10,000 Out-of-School Girls in Rajasthan

Target 4.1 – Ensure completion of free, equitable, quality primary and secondary education for all

In the dusty hills of Rajasthan, the school enrolment numbers once looked better on paper than they did in real life. Officially, millions of children were in school. But many girls, particularly in tribal and remote districts like Banswara, were not. They were fetching water. Caring for siblings. Or being prepared for early marriage.

Education was technically available. But for girls in these communities, access was not the same as inclusion.

In 2015, Educate Girls, a non-profit founded by Safeena Husain, launched an ambitious new model. The goal was to bring out-of-school girls back into the system and keep them there long enough to finish primary school. The strategy was simple, local, and scalable.

The organisation trained a volunteer force of “Team Balika”, young women and men from the same villages as the girls. These volunteers went door-to-door, household by household, identifying girls who were missing from school. They didn’t just make a list. They sat with families. They listened. They answered questions. They made the case that sending a daughter to school could be the smartest investment a household ever made.

But enrolment was only the first step. Many of these girls were the first in their family to attend school. Some had never held a pencil. Others had dropped out years ago. So Team Balika members supported them inside the classroom too, helping with reading, maths, and confidence-building.

This approach worked because it was built from within. The volunteers came from the same places. They understood the barriers: economic pressure, social expectations, safety concerns. And because they were locals, they were trusted.

From 2015 to 2018, Educate Girls piloted a new way to fund this work, through India’s first Development Impact Bond (DIB). Private investors provided the upfront capital. The government and donors only paid if agreed learning and enrolment outcomes were achieved. This gave the team freedom to adapt quickly, and an incentive to focus on real results.

And the results were clear.

• In three years, more than 10,000 out-of-school girls were enrolled across 1400 villages.

• The programme achieved 116 per cent of its learning targets and 160 per cent of its enrolment goal.

• The average cost per student was lower than in many traditional aid programmes.

• The outcomes were independently verified and widely recognised across India and internationally.

But the real success wasn’t in the numbers. It was in the stories. Girls who had never entered a classroom were now reading to their younger siblings. Parents who once kept daughters home were now advocating for scholarships. Entire villages shifted their view of what a girl could grow up to be.

Educate Girls has since expanded to 20 districts across multiple Indian states, reaching millions. Yet its method remains grounded in the same core idea: if you want to change education for girls, you must start by understanding why they’re excluded, and work from there.

This is what SDG 4.1 looks like in practice. Not just schooling, but full, meaningful participation. Not just funding, but outcome-based accountability. Not just access, but achievement.

Your Voice. Your Target. Your Legacy.

If your school, community, or youth group wants to support real education access, don’t start with policies, start with people. Go where the data falls short. Speak to families. Walk the last mile. Prove that education can include every child, if we build the system to make it happen.

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