(MENAFN- The Peninsula) QNA
Doha, Qatar: Vice Chairperson and CEO of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development HE Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al-Thani awarded the WISE Prize for Education 2023 to Founder and CEO of Educate Girls project in India, Safeena Husain, for dedicating 15 years to building the non-profit organization focused on empowering communities for girls' education in some of Indias hardest to reach villages.
Commenting on the award, Husain said: "This is a collective win for all of us working toward girls education, right from the government and local communities to dedicated gender champions and our supporters. It is a testament to the array of initiatives that are actively addressing this global challenge, embracing grassroots innovations and technology-driven solutions that are tirelessly working to ensure that every girl, in every village, is in school and learning well."
"Girls' education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet to solve some of the world's most complex problems. We must recognize that the right to education is a girl's inherent right - a right that must always take center stage," she added.
She gave the example of one of the girls who dropped out of education, who returned to it after a break and continued its various stages. She was then appointed president of her city and allocated a large portion of the city's budget to girls' education.
Safeena added that the lack of education for girls is linked to poverty and society's inequality between the sexes.
Therefore, this mentality must be changed, and the scope must be opened wide for girls, and technology must be harnessed to facilitate access to them in remote areas and conflict areas.
She indicated that she was able to include more than 1.5 million girls in school seats.
She hopes to reach 10 million girls over the next few years relying on artificial intelligence technology to identify the origins of the problems they face and provide high-quality services.
Safeena Husain's journey with WISE began with a WISE Award in 2014 that acknowledged Educate Girls for its positive social impact and ability to scale.
Over the years, Educate Girls has mobilized more than 1.4 million girls for enrolment and supported over 1.9 million children in their learning in India.
Thanks to a precision targeting method using AI, Educate Girls is able to target, in 5 years, the same number of out-of-school girls, which would otherwise require 45 years.
Through a network of over 21,000 community-based champions in some of the most marginalized communities in the country, the organization has been working to break the intergenerational cycle of inequality and exclusion.
Under Safeena Husain's guidance, Educate Girls has evolved into a leading global force, harnessing innovative financing and AI technology to bridge the gender gap in education.
This is mirrored in its global milestones: the delivery of the world's first Development Impact Bond in education, and the organization becoming Asia's first. The Audacious Project - which, housed at TED, is a collaborative funding initiative catalyzing social impact on a grand scale.
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