TRU began the Girl Education Program (GEP) named Abhinav Kanya Shikshan Karyakram in 2004 to help girls from the tribal children in attending high school. The program provides these girls with residential facilities, special tutoring and opportunities to engage in extra-curricular activities. The program is motivated with the idea that a Happy Girl Child at the center can lead to much improved social communities through healthy and functional families.

Background:

The High School in the Shivrajpur region of Panchmahals is not easily accessible to the tribal communities living in surrounding villages with students having to walk through difficult terrains to reach school. This difficulty is accentuated for the girl child, who is often also discriminated against within tribal families and disallowed to attend High School due to the distance and desire of families to use them for household work rather than send them to get educated. Keeping these challenges in mind TRU designed GEP to be a residential facility right next to the High School, which enables the girl child to completely focus on their education and also have their food as well additional coaching needs met. In the long term this is also meant to serve as a model or demonstration project for Government Facilities (which are currently inadequate) to emulate.

Program Objectives:

• Provide girls with a stable home (since labor related migration of parents is also a issue in the region)
• Provide girls with basic food to meet their nutritional needs (includes 3 meals a day)
• Facilitate filling up deficits in reading, writing and calculation skills
• Engage girls in extra curricular activities wherever possible

Approach:

GEP adopts a holistic approach for the development of the Girl Child in their endeavours to get a High School education. Salient features of this approach are:

• Hostel facilities with a capacity for 120 girls
• Tutoring through 2 tutors teaching - 1 for Math & Science and another for Social Sciences
• A house mother to take care of basic needs for the girls
• A cook to prepare fresh meals
• Engage the girls to work in Kitchen Garden to cultivate the spirit of self sufficiency and inculcate good farming techniques which they can take back home
• Girls take turns to provide help to the cook
• A Library to enhance reading
• Extracurricular activities such as sewing, drawing, painting, indoor-outdoor games and excursions

Results:

• GEP has grown from 12 girls in the first year to 107 girls in 5 years
• Some of the graduates have come back to their communities as health workers, government program coordinators
• Some girls have gone on further to enroll in college