Nanhi Kali Organization Helps Girls Get An Education In India With 'A Girl Store'

Less than half of all school-aged girls in India go to school.

One nonprofit organization says you can change that, one school book or pencil case at a time.

Nanhi Kali, a nonprofit organization dedicated to women's education rights in India, shows its donors exactly what supplies it takes to get an education to individual girls in India through its website, A Girl Store.

Workbooks, pencils, uniforms, shoes, and more are displayed for a potential donor to buy for a young girl. Each item can be purchased separately for each particular girl's needs.

Once each girl has all of her items paid for, the website says that girl is "off to school."

Despite a small rise over the 2008-2009 school year, statistics released this week gauge that only 48 percent of all girls in India have access to an education, reports The Hindustan.

Due to overwhelming poverty, Indian girls are funneled into marriage and sex slavery rather than schools. To help ease the trend, Nanhi Kali is centered on providing the means to an education "because the most effective way to break the cycle of exploitation is education."

Nanhi Kali also launched "A Girl Story," a donation-based film depicting the journey of one young Indian girl in search for an education.

New chapters of "A Girl Story" are released based on the amount of contributions recieved through its website.

WATCH:

Watch more chapters of "A Girl Story" at the project's website.

A physical version of A Girl Store opened Thursday at 501 Lexington Ave. in New York City, USA. For more information about A Girl Store" target="_hplink">A Girl Store and other projects by Nanhi Kali, follow the links below:

Comments

[Dana1982]

12:08 PM on 02/03/2011

Shane that this program discriminates againse males. Discrimination is wrong on all levels. Too bad, it sounds like a good program but I will not contribute or support any group that activly pratices discrimination.

[Purav J Patel]

03:18 PM on 02/09/2011

Actually, as an Indian I can say that currently, boys education is favored over girls education, which is causing an imbalance in India's education system (since girls are less valued). If you are a true feminist, you would support this charity, since it clearly fixes the current discrimination. To call it discrimination to want to fix this imbalance is narrow-minded and wrong on so many levels.

[satishHindu]

04:51 PM on 02/11/2011

As an Indian, who speaks English, I couldn't understand what you meant by: " boys education is favored over girls education".

There is no Government policy that discriminates against girls. If you're referring to more boys enrolled in school, then that itself is not a basis to discriminate against them because they are plenty of boys who can't afford it.

Dana1982 is right. It is blatant discrimination to exclude one group as a matter of policy to address "imbalances" no matter how skewed. But then again you probably think apartheid schemes like caste-based reservation are justified.

[merlinspinoza]

10:49 PM on 02/01/2011

maybe also donate to the largest private public school system in India Maharishi Vidya Mandirs

currently about 100 000 students in 140 schools

http://www.maharishividyamandir.com/index.jsp

also it would be nice to mention about India, its traditional education system is still recovering from british ignorance Imperialists dont educate the poor because they'll revolt

at the largest ashram in northern india many orphans are cared for http://www.ihrf.com/

[iimpactindia]

01:11 PM on 01/31/2011

Nanhi Kali is a great initiative! To really solve the problem of girl education in India, you have to start at the grassroots level - which are the backward, rural regions and small villages in India. IIMPACT is an NGO that has been working since 2003 on this by focusing on providing education to poor girls aged 6 to 14 in the most backward, rural areas of India. These girls would normally never go to school. IIMPACT breaks this cycle of illiteracy by running local community-based Learning Centers in these villages. Starting with just 20 learning centers in 2003, IIMPACT today runs over 560 centers, educating over 17,000 girls in 7 States of India. IIMPACT is making a true difference - as almost all girls who complete Class V go on to middle and high school. There are many inspiring stories about how it has changed lives at http://www.iimpact.net/ and also at http://www.facebook.com/iimpact.

"We expected education to transform the girls. We didn't expect it to transform the entire village"

[iniyainiya95]

06:40 AM on 01/30/2011

Chk out http://celebtweets.in for tweets & twitter photos from Indian and International celebrities all in one place

[HappyMarsden]

10:17 PM on 01/29/2011

I think I just found a good cause for Bill / Melinda Gates to put their resources into. If the statistics are true, then this could easily be fixed. There's little reason why 95% of India can not get a school education. Actually, never mind Bill and Melinda. The money India spends on arming themselves could pay for this program a thousand times over. One idea is to provide cheaply produced netbooks to school age children. Installed on the netbook drives would be all the software that school age children would need, from the first grade to the last; including instructional material for the teacher. A self-contained childhood of teaching material, designed as intuitive and easy as possible.

For the remainder, that can be worked out. Either parents could be the instructors, or small local schools can be built (outdoors or in), with one instructor (volunteer preferably), helping the kids having problems with the lesson. May not be the ideal teaching scenario, but a whole lot better than what they now have. If they can make the laptops solar, to charge the batteries, you can't go wrong.

[Marchmont]

08:20 PM on 01/28/2011

The US has already tapped and commercialized North America’s vast reserves of shale gas and, working with Canada, will completely revolutionize the energy market. In his State of the Union speech, Obama gave shale gas the green light by moving the debate from “renewable” to simply “clean” energy and sacking his climate change czar. Now India has also found unlimited reserves of this low-cost, eco-friendly fuel in the Damodar basin and the future looks ever brighter for the sub-continent. With a growth rate as impressive as China, abundant raw materials, skilled workers and brilliant professionals, India may end up the dominant power of the eastern hemisphere.

[ritgar]

06:48 PM on 01/28/2011

Sorry - they need to take care of their own. They already have all of our jobs, now they want the rest of the money too. Keep your cash here.

[gqsmoothie]

07:13 PM on 01/28/2011

Wow, I can't believe people with your opinion actually exists. I can't decide if I should pity you or hate you.

[HappyMarsden]

10:07 PM on 01/29/2011

Do both. Then that would show how superior you are.

[satishHindu]

10:01 PM on 01/28/2011

Nah.

The amount India earns in outsourcing is less than it spends on Defense, and it buys arms, aircraft from USA. Besides America has been poaching India's skilled workers and best students (who pay a lot of tuition). How do you think the Indian taxpayer feels about training engineers, doctors, accountants etc. who end up lining the pockets of the IRS?

India is also a net *IMPORTING* Asian nation, so your argument that it wants your cash amuses me.

[volet54]

05:02 PM on 01/28/2011

I can't help but wonder how much good Charley Sheen's money could do for the world, if he only had his head screwed on right. I know its off topic..but I'm always left to donate just a little here and a little there, in my imagination I wish I could give so much more. And yes, I do give my time, but even then, it leaves me feeling like we have so much to do.

[janeinmia]

04:17 PM on 01/28/2011

Just a quick little check on the Girl Store and the Mahindra Foundation which is behind it led me to discover that the eponymous Mahindra was recently sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the Union Carbide/Bhopal disaster. Keshub Mahindra was chairman of Union Carbide in India at the time of the Bhopal disaster, and now he is the director of the Mahindra Foundation.

I think I'll donate money elsewhere.

[satishHindu]

03:39 PM on 01/28/2011

"Due to overwhelming poverty, Indian girls are funneled into marriage and sex slavery rather than schools."
Due to overwhelming poverty, Indian boys are funneled into crime and child labour rather than schools.

If you're going to provide funds for a school in India or material towards it are you going to tell them to exclude boys? Petty sexism, utterly pointless. There already exists numerous discriminatory schemes in favour of girls on part of the Indian government.

Most poor Indian women don't go out to work because they HAVE to cook, clean etc. WITHOUT electricity and gas. More importantly the jobs available as au pairs, maids etc. are plentiful & well paying compared to the effort one needs to put in search of a degree. Therefore educating them in a way that excludes boys would be entirely frivolous.

The average poor Indian has an entirely different set of morals, some would contend far stronger family values and ethics, than the average lower class Westerner. They don't need preaching about "the girl child", what they need are water, electricity etc. This appeal (sex slavery is oh so colourful a term) seems predicated on some feminist notion that women's education is the problem/solution to everything.

The womens cause you should be supporting is preventing selective abortion/infanticide of female babies and family planning. You could do this by paying for a maximum of 2 girl children, conditioned on the couple not going on to have more children i.e. sons.