Adolescent Girls Education ( Mahoba, Uttar Pradesh)

Adolescent Girls Education ( Mahoba, Uttar Pradesh)

Mahoba is one of the drought prone districts of Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh.  Recurring drought in the district has led to serious impact on food security and livelihood of people in the areas. This has also increased vulnerability of children especially children’s access to education, nutrition and protective environment.  Literacy rate is 66.94 and sex ratio is 1000:880. There are 64399 Adolescent Girls (AG) in Mahoba district. In partner (KSS) intervention areas there are 433 adolescent girls.  278 of them are in school and where as 155 have left schooling.  36 % adolescent are still out of school in 2015-16. 

KSS has been working with Adolescent Girls since 2010 in 10 villages for their improved education. From 2010 to 2015 positive impact towards girl child education has been observed in these villages through engaging them in various group processes. Apart from awareness on importance of education through group processes, their access to entitlements different schemes and programmes has also been increased.  By 2014-15 all the Adolescent girls were registered with ICDS centres which enable all of them to get access to nutritional support and iron folic acid tablets.  All adolescent girls of these 10 villages get access to immunization and anaemia test which is important for their development.  

The most important challenge in the KSS intervention villages was the motivation of the children towards education.  Almost all the adolescent girls were helping their parents at home (sibling care and household chores). Education is the key towards a transformative change that KSS  started focussing on.  The organization started working  with  involving the village communities  and has active participation from the women and the adolescent girls in these villages. Each village has Adolescent Girls’ Group (AGG) to engage them in various activities including theatre in education, sports, and storytelling.  The AGG also discusses about the children dropping out of school and reporting them back to the KSS field activists for follow up. This has helped improved education of adolescent girls in intervention areas.   

Achievements in last 5 years (2010-2015) with reference to Adolescent girl education:

In 2010 only 3 adolescent girls from a village were able to get access to ICDS services but in 2015 all adolescent girls registered with ICDS centres and getting all the support.

In 2010 only 47 % adolescent girls were going school where as in 2015 64 % adolescent girls are in primary school

In 2010 only 44 % adolescent girls were going to school where as in 2015 82 % adolescent girls are going to upper primary school. 

Positive Changes seen at school level through advocacy on RTE:               

2010	2015
Lack of teachers in school	Appointment of more teachers during the years. 12 teachers  (7 males + 5 females) appointed this year in school of KSS Number of villages= 10 Total schools= 16 (11 primary and 5 upper primary schools) Number of students in these schools= 1052 Number of teachers for these schools= 35
Lack of toilets	All the schools have 2 units of toilets one for girls and one for boys
Non-functional SMC	SMC functional in all the schools
MDM not regular and in not a good quality	Regular MDM served and with improved quality