“Girls’ education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet to help solve some of the world’s most difficult problems” says LSE alumna Safeena Husain (BSc Economic History 1995), founder of Educate Girls. Girls’ education acts as a powerful catalyst for change with a multiplier effect on at least 9 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by positively impacting issues ranging from child marriage and poverty to health and climate change. But above all, education is a girl’s fundamental human right. This is why Safeena has committed to improving access and quality of education for over 15 million children in India cumulatively by 2025.
In 2007, Safeena Husain founded Educate Girls, a non-profit organisation in India committed to mobilising communities for girls’ education in India’s rural and educationally backward areas. Educate Girls combines advanced analytics with door-to-door community engagement to create new educational pathways for girls in India. The organisation has achieved remarkable success, mobilising over 1.4 million girls for school enrolment and supporting over 1.9 million students with remedial learning. The organisation works with over 21,000 community-based gender champions in some of the most marginalised communities in India to break the cycle of inequality and exclusion.
At this event, LSE President and Vice Chancellor Larry Kramer and LSE alumna Safeena Husain will discuss why a girls' education is one of the best investments that a country can make and how Safeena intends to continue to scale up Educate Girls to improve millions of lives.
Meet our speaker and chair
Safeena Husain (@safeenahusain) is the Founder and Board Member of Educate Girls – an Indian non-profit working towards empowering communities for girls’ education in some of India’s hardest-to-reach villages. In 2023, Safeena became a WISE Prize Laureate, making her the first Indian woman to be honoured for her contributions to girls’ education in rural India.
Larry Kramer is President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a renowned legal scholar and teacher, a former Dean of the Stanford Law School, and a former President of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
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