Safeena Husain founded Educate Girls in 2007 and today they operate in more than 20,000 villages across three states in India.
They’re mobilising communities in the most marginalised and remote areas to get out-of-school girls back into school and ensure they stay in school and are actually learning.
They’ve grown at a fast pace and today have a team of 2,200 full time employees and 15,000 volunteers.
Under Safeena’s leadership, and in conjunction with the UBS Optimus Foundation and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), they launched the first development impact bond (DIB). This was a highly innovative approach to align performance with funding.
Educate Girls was the service provider; CIFF was the outcome payer (who were purchasing two results: (1) getting out-of-school girls back into school and staying in school, and (2) ensuring learning outcomes); and the UBS Optimus Foundation was the social investor.
We hear the ins and outs of what turned out to be a highly successful initiative. Educate Girls took the risk of performance, UBS took the financial risk and CIFF got to purchase the impact.
We also hear how Educate Girls was the first Asian organisation to become an Audacious Project — an initiative run by TED that brings philanthropists together to collaborate and back really innovative, big bets that improve the world.
The COVID-19 pandemic is severely impacting girls and women, and Safeena's view is that if action isn’t taken it could well set girls’ education back by a decade, if not more, so let's work together to get out-of-school girls back into school!
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