Safeena Husain

Educate Girls' founder, Safeena Husain's Magsaysay Award win is 18 years in the making. Through projects like Pragati and Vidya, the NGO is changing the lived realities of girls and women who have been cut off from the education system in India.

In 2007, Safeena Husain began with 50 Rajasthan villages. Today, Educate Girls has enrolled 1.4M girls in 30,000 villages and is the first Indian NGO to win Magsaysay.

Sovni isn’t the only girl in the village whose family had a resistant mindset towards education for girls. For the longest time, villagers felt that educating a girl would have no long-term benefit for her family.

Started five years back, Educate Girls aims to get as many girls as possible into school so they can benefit from a good education, improve their lives and become an asset to their communities. And what started with just 500 schools has now spread to 4425 schools! Safeena Husain, the founder and Chief Executive Officer, tells us about it.