A bold plan to empower 1.6 million out-of-school girls in India

"Girls' education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet to help solve some of the world's most difficult problems," says social entrepreneur Safeena Husain. In a visionary talk, she shares her plan to enroll a staggering 1.6 million girls in school over the next five years -- combining advanced analytics with door-to-door community engagement to create new educational pathways for girls in India. (This ambitious plan is part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

The world today has many problems.

And they're all very complicated
and interconnected and difficult.

But there is something we can do.

I believe

that girls' education is the closest thing
we have to a silver bullet

to help solve some of the world's
most difficult problems.

But you don't have to take my word for it.

The World Bank says

that girls' education
is one of the best investments

that a country can make.

It helps to positively impact

nine of the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals.

Everything from health,
nutrition, employment --

all of these are positively impacted
when girls are educated.

Additionally, climate scientists
have recently rated girls' education

at number six out of 80 actions
to reverse global warming.

At number six, it's rated higher
than solar panels and electric cars.

And that's because
when girls are educated,

they have smaller families,

and the resulting reduction in population

reduces carbon emissions significantly.

But more than that, you know,
it's a problem we have to solve once.

Because an educated mother
is more than twice as likely

to educate her children.

Which means that by doing it once,

we can close the gender
and literacy gap forever.

I work in India,

which has made incredible progress

in bringing elementary education for all.

However, we still have
four million out-of-school girls,

one of the highest in the world.

And girls are out of school
because of, obviously poverty,

social, cultural factors.

But there's also this
underlying factor of mindset.

I have met a girl
whose name was Naraaz Nath.

Naaraaz means angry.

And when I asked her,
"Why is your name 'angry'?"

she said, "Because everybody
was so angry when a girl was born."

Another girl called Antim Bala,

which means the last girl.

Because everybody hoped
that would be the last girl to be born.

A girl called Aachuki.

It means somebody who has arrived.

Not wanted, but arrived.

And it is this mindset

that keeps girls from school
or completing their education.

It's this belief that a goat is an asset

and a girl is a liability.

My organization Educate Girls
works to change this.

And we work in some
of the most difficult, rural,

remote and tribal villages.

And how do we do it?

We first and foremost find

young, passionate, educated youth
from the same villages.

Both men and women.

And we call them Team Balika,

balika just means the girl child,

so this is a team that we are creating
for the girl child.

And so once we recruit
our community volunteers,

we train them, we mentor them,
we hand-hold them.

That's when our work starts.

And the first piece we do
is about identifying every single girl

who's not going to school.

But the way we do it
is a little different and high-tech,

at least in my view.

Each of our frontline staff
have a smartphone.

It has its own Educate Girls app.

And this app has everything
that our team needs.

It has digital maps of where
they're going to be conducting the survey,

it has the survey in it,
all the questions,

little guides on how best
to conduct the survey,

so that the data that comes to us
is in real time and is of good quality.

So armed with this,

our teams and our volunteers
go door-to-door

to every single household
to find every single girl

who may either we never enrolled
or dropped out of school.

And because we have this data
and technology piece,

very quickly we can figure out
who the girls are and where they are.

Because each of our
villages are geotagged,

and we can actually
build that information out

very, very quickly.

And so once we know where the girls are,

we actually start the process
of bringing them back into school.

And that actually is just
our community mobilization process,

it starts with village meetings,
neighborhood meetings,

and as you see, individual counseling
of parents and families,

to be able to bring the girls
back into school.

And this can take anything
from a few weeks to a few months.

And once we bring the girls
into the school system,

we also work with the schools

to make sure that schools
have all the basic infrastructure

so that the girls will be able to stay.

And this would include
a separate toilet for girls,

drinking water,

things that will help them to be retained.

But all of this would be useless
if our children weren't learning.

So we actually run a learning program.

And this is a supplementary
learning program,

and it's very, very important,

because most of our children
are first-generation learners.

That means there's nobody at home
to help them with homework,

there's nobody who can support
their education.

Their parents can't read and write.

So it's really, really key

that we do the support
of the learning in the classrooms.

So this is essentially our model,

in terms of finding,
bringing the girls in,

making sure that
they're staying and learning.

And we know that our model works.

And we know this because

a most recent randomized
control evaluation

confirms its efficacy.

Our evaluator found
that over a three-year period

Educate Girls was able to bring back
92 percent of all out-of-school girls

back into school.

(Applause)

And in terms of learning,

our children's learning
went up significantly

as compared to control schools.

So much so, that it was
like an additional year of schooling

for the average student.

And that's enormous,

when you think about a tribal child
who's entering the school system

for the first time.

So here we have a model that works;

we know it's scalable,

because we are already functioning
at 13,000 villages.

We know it's smart,

because of the use of data and technology.

We know that it's
sustainable and systemic,

because we work in partnership
with the community,

it's actually led by the community.

And we work in partnership
with the government,

so there's no creation
of a parallel delivery system.

And so because we have
this innovative partnership

with the community,
the government, this smart model,

we have this big, audacious dream today.

And that is to solve
a full 40 percent of the problem

of out-of-school girls in India
in the next five years.

(Applause)

And you're thinking, that's a little ...

You know, how am I even thinking
about doing that,

because India is not a small place,
it's a huge country.

It's a country of over a billion people.

We have 650,000 villages.

How is it that I'm standing here,

saying that one small organization

is going to solve a full
40 percent of the problem?

And that's because we have a key insight.

And that is,

because of our entire approach,
with data and with technology,

that five percent of villages in India

have 40 percent
of the out-of-school girls.

And this is a big,
big piece of the puzzle.

Which means, I don't have to work
across the entire country.

I have to work in those
five percent of the villages,

about 35,000 villages,

to actually be able to solve
a large piece of the problem.

And that's really key,

because these villages

not only have high burden
of out-of-school girls,

but also a lot of
related indicators, right,

like malnutrition, stunting,
poverty, infant mortality,

child marriage.

So by working and focusing here,

you can actually create
a large multiplier effect

across all of these indicators.

And it would mean

that we would be able to bring back
1.6 million girls back into school.

(Applause)

I have to say, I have been
doing this for over a decade,

and I have never met a girl
who said to me,

you know, "I want to stay at home,"

"I want to graze the cattle,"

"I want to look after the siblings,"

"I want to be a child bride."

Every single girl I meet
wants to go to school.

And that's what we really want to do.

We want to be able to fulfill
those 1.6 million dreams.

And it doesn't take much.

To find and enroll a girl
with our model is about 20 dollars.

To make sure that she is learning
and providing a learning program,

it's another 40 dollars.

But today is the time to do it.

Because she is truly
the biggest asset we have.

I am Safeena Husain, and I educate girls.

Thank you.

(Applause)