India is home to over 72 million adolescent girls. Girls are excluded from critical knowledge about basic health, safety, human rights, and life skills. Without this knowledge or the ability to make decisions, they are unable to advocate for themselves or take control of their own futures. These isolated girls are more likely to perpetuate cycles of poverty and social inequality in their communities.
This pressing situation is compounded by the fact that adolescent girls have the immense unmet potential to reconstruct societies from within. Given knowledge and agency, an adolescent girl is proven to advocate for herself, seek educational opportunities, and pull herself, her family, and her nation out of poverty. Failure to invest in young women is not only an injustice to girls; it’s holding back global development.
VOICE exposes underserved populations of girls to a variety of marketable, life skill topics to develop confidence and expand their personal support networks in order to overcome the challenges they face. Through our innovative curriculum that delivers critical information, life skills, and spoken English, we've seen that when a girl finds her voice, the world around her begins to change. VOICE partners with local organizations, governments, and low-cost private schools to implement camps and yearlong peer-led programs in schools for girls ages 11-16 years old. VOICE looks at creating an ecosystem of support and thus we have begun working with parents, teachers, and boys.