By Joseph Sebastian, Head Faizal and Shabana Foundation

28-year old Deepa, was keen to study further after she passed high school, but was married off at the age of 18. Her parents believed that a woman should be confined to the home and domestic duties. Deepa was married to Chinnakannan, 11 years her senior. He hailed from Periyapulivarisai which belongs to Ennegollu panchayat, Krishnagiri District. Incidentally, this is one of the villages where the Faizal and Shabana, Krishnagiri Development Project is being implemented.

Despite her deep desire to study further, her family and husband’s family were not supportive of this dream. Deepa says, “My parents wanted to fulfill their responsibility of marrying me off – which stopped my studies. In my husband’s family, no one was willing to send me for further studies. Though I have talent, no one helped me or gave me space to prove myself. Thus, I was forced into the mundane household activities with limited access to the world outside.” Deepa is now a mother of three children – Swathi, Shalini and Harichandran who are studying in the classes 5th, 3rd and kindergarten. Speaking to us in a dejected voice, she remembers, “I was supposed to be in the house and take care of my family and house hold chores only. I could not go out like some of the other women.”

She says that she is forced to be dependent on her husband for everything. She believes that having a job and an income means freedom, both financially and socially.

Deepa met the Faizal and Shabana Foundation team, who urged her to join the tailoring course. She was initially reluctant but with repeated encouragement, she obtained her husband’s permission to begin the course.

Deepa was part of the first batch of the Faizal and Shabana Foundation tailoring course, which commenced in July 2016. She was also part of the reproductive health awareness classes. It was the first time in her life that she understood the basics of the human reproductive system. She actively participated in the legal and gender rights awareness sessions as well. Six months after her training, Deepa is now the leader of the local women’s group and supports the foundation in all their programmes at district level.

“I knew nothing about tailoring, before joining the course”, says Deepa. “But now I earn well from stitching clothes. I bought a new sewing machine and it is very helpful for stitching clothes for my family members. I also work from home as a tailor and earn Rs.6500/- and now, I can buy whatever I want”, she adds with excitement. Proud and confident, she further shares, “Now I am not dependent on my husband.

The earning I make is additional for the family and I am saving money after all the expenses. This makes my husband happy too.”

By Faizal Kottikollon, Co-Founder Faizal and Shabana Foundation

A few months back I watched this film Hidden Figures, based on the real-life story of three brilliant African-American women at NASA — Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – who serve as the brains behind one of the most significant operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 1961. Like any movie some of the scenes are fiction but for most the film is an accurate depiction of their lives.

Almost 60 years ago being African American and a woman in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) would have been extremely challenging, and they had to fight to succeed.

I truly enjoyed the movie because it highlights the two things I firmly believe in personally. Firstly, women can do anything, they are the backbone of our society, I often feel they are more organised and can multi-task better than men. I have had the joy of witnessing this first hand with my wife and three daughters. They are all strong and focused, and can do anything once they make up their mind to achieve it. Secondly, the movie revolves around technology an area that holds the greatest fascination for me, because I see the power it has to change the world. So, I cannot imagine anything better than having women in technology or STEM. I believe that this powerful combination can bring positive change in the world and that is what the movie depicts.

I enjoy interacting with the students from the GVHSS girls school the Foundation supports in Kerala. Our aim when we took on the project was to create a platform for all the girl students to explore different opportunities and careers. Often when we meet students, they will tell us their top two favorite places in the school are the outdoor sports turf and the laboratories. It gives me great happiness that these areas which were not there before, are today really making a difference to the children. It is nice to interact with them and see them focused on building careers in new fields that they did not consider before.

This change in thinking is very essential, because women empowerment is a very important cause to me. I believe we need to get more women in the forefront give them more opportunities. I hope that our work with the Girls School in Nadakkavu is the first step in this direction and has helped create a platform for students to explore
new horizons.

We also hope that our model and the success the students have achieved through it inspires many other schools across India and Worldwide. The number of awards and accolades the girls have won in the last year has been amazing. Shabana and I could not be prouder of all the students in the school. In many ways, they are our inspiration to do more.

The Krishnagiri Development Project (KDP) is an integrated community development project being implemented by the Faizal and Shabana Foundation in the Ennegollu Gram Panchayat 1, in Krishnagiri district, Tamil Nadu, India. It is one among the backward Panchayats and consists of eight villages. Supported by the Faizal and Shabana Foundation, KDP is implemented by a team of professionals from the Development Promotion Group.

Reaching out at the family level, the goal of the project is to enhance the quality of life for the community. The focus is on education, health, sustainable livelihood, and youth development. Women, children and youth are the key target of this social intervention programmme.

KDP’s major objectives include:

1. Improving quality and access to drinking water and sanitation to ensure the safety, health and security of the women and adolescent girls in the project areas by the year 2020.
2. Facilitating farmers’ exposure to sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry methods and tools.
3. Equipping the micro-level institutions with better management and lobbying practices, increasing access to government schemes for SHGs, women, children, farmers and others.

Empowering women is a critical area of intervention. Various activities are carried out to action positive change, including awareness campaigns on health (specifically reproductive health) and programmes highlight gender equality, women’s legal rights and skill development. Vocational training is also a key strategy used by us to empower women. For instance, we periodically offer a six-month tailoring course which also covers embroidery and creative designing for flower vases and wire baskets. The course has been well-received, with 55 women participating in the second batch, which is currently in progress.

The program now in its second year continues to expand and has been very beneficially in developing the Ennegollu Gram Panchayat.

An old, dilapidated building, with brick walls and minimal essential furniture, facilities and unkept toilets. A chorus of resonating repetitions. A playground with broken or no equipment and unkempt children running around, kicking up clouds of dust, which almost never settles during the entire school day. This is the image that comes to most of our minds when we think of a government school.

In a country where a majority of children attend school, this rather dismal image presents disappointing outcomes. A staggering 90 percent of India’s young students rely on government educational facilities. Due to poor financial support, these schools struggle to remain open, let alone renovate or update their facilities to match the number of students. Apart from the lack of resources, teachers’ who have come through the Public Service Commissions’ selection processes struggle to work with the inept system. While most teachers join with great enthusiasm, they, unfortunately, become part of the dismal system over time, eventually leading to growing dropout rates, and ultimately causing the high illiteracy rate in our country.

Education is expected to be emancipating; it is the road that leads children to discover their full potential in life. A good education system relies on three key focus areas, namely, the facilities, the teachers and the students themselves. Supporting strategic time and efforts (including money) into government schools is a thoughtful way to give back to our country as it helps create a sustainable society.

We, at the Faizal and Shabana Foundation, witnessed the transformative power of changing the skyline of education first hand when we became part of the PRISM (Promoting Regional Schools to International Standards through Multiple Interventions) Project at the Government Vocational Higher Secondary School for girls in Nadakkavu in Kozhikode, Kerala.

Through offsite manufacturing technology, this 120-year- old school underwent a complete transformation in just 10-months with the first phase completed during the summer break of just 95 days. A comprehensive structural revamp of the school building changed the entire look and feel of the premises, with new classrooms, toilets, science and computer labs, indoor gymnasium, an AstroTurf stadium for football and hockey and an industrial kitchen and dining hall. But, the efforts didn’t just stop there, continued monitoring of the school's performance with yearly metrics, against set goals ensures continued results and improvement. The results have already indicated a threefold increase in student performance. Now, for each vacant seat in GVHSS Nadakkavu, the school receives a minimum of three applications.

Teaching is perhaps a job that is taken for granted by many. But the truth is, teachers are the managers of the country’s most significant resource – our children. They need to be empowered and equipped to handle the Herculean task of educating India’s future. Regular training sessions help teachers improve their skills and expertise. At the GVHSS Nadakkavu School, special training programs are conducted for the faculty, by IIM Kozhikode, Ruth Corn Institute-India, and other educational experts. During the sessions teachers are engaged actively in skill- building exercises and inward-looking retrospection processes to relook and relearn how to become a more holistic teacher, thereby helping the children to be better learners.

All these efforts have resulted in an unparalleled transformation of the students. Their confidence improved and they believed in themselves more, education was no longer just a formality to complete. Today each student has big ambitions and dreams and an understanding that they need to do what they love and are good at so that they can help others in a better way.

The GVHSS Nadakkavu School is today amongst the top 3 government schools in India. The school's success story has inspired the Government of Kerala to take up Mission 1000, under which 1000 other schools in the state are being redeveloped as per the Faizal and Shabana Foundation Nadakkavu model. The 1000 eligible schools, selected through a meticulous process, will undergo a total revamp of the infrastructure, amenities and operations to provide state of the art facilities and upgrade the overall quality of the education provided. We aim to bring international level education to 2,000,000 children by 2020 and make a difference in the lives of over 1 million families. This will positively impact the students and their families, and also go a long way to transform our communities and in turn, our country.

The answer for a better tomorrow for our nation lies in appropriate and sustainable social development. While social development could mean a whole lot of things like health, environment and security, its foundation is firmly based on learning which gets initiated in education. We cannot make remarkable progress if we don't change at the grassroots. Our education system must be modified to keep up with the advancement of time and be more student-centric than syllabus centric. After all, we don’t light lamps to hide them, but instead to brighten our worlds.