Quick Take
- Educate Girls enrolled 285,237 out-of-school girls in 2024-25, its own progress report says.
- Independent evaluators measured a 1.25 standard deviation learning gain in three Madhya Pradesh districts by February 2024.
- The same evaluators could not match 6.8% of reported enrolments to school registers in 2024.
Educate Girls enrolled 285,237 out-of-school girls across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in 2024-25, its own progress report says.
A Ministry of Education review on 16 May 2026 put the wider problem far higher. Over two crore children aged 14 to 18 are out of school, the ministry said, citing the Periodic Labour Force Survey.
The Safeena Husain Educate Girls story is usually told in one number: two million girls. Peoples Feed has read the audited accounts and both independent evaluations behind that claim. They do not say the same thing.
What Safeena Husain changed in four states
Safeena Husain built the model on a door-to-door village survey. She founded Educate Girls in 2007. It now works in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The method is repetitive door-to-door work. Village volunteers, called Team Balika, walk every household and list girls who are not in school. They then negotiate with the family, and follow the girl into the classroom.
In 2024-25 the organisation trained 11,592 Team Balika volunteers, its progress report records. It also trained 60,463 School Management Committee members that year.
Enrolment is only half the model. A remedial curriculum called Gyan Ka Pitara reached 181,251 children in grades 3 to 5 in 2024-25. Another 15,500 adolescent girls joined Pragati, a second-chance programme.
Across the Audacious Project phase from 2019 to 2025, Educate Girls counts 1.56 million out-of-school girls enrolled. That figure is the organisation’s own. It is not the figure an evaluator measured.
How the money is spent, and who audits it
Educate Girls is registered as Foundation to Educate Girls Globally, a Section 8 company under the Companies Act, 2013. Its audited accounts for 2023-24 report income of Rs 133.96 crore. Spending that year was Rs 133.92 crore.
The audit was signed by N. A. Shah Associates LLP, firm registration number 116560W/W100149. Peoples Feed read the statements inside the annual report published on the organisation’s own website.
The spending split explains the model better than any brochure. Employee benefits took Rs 74.60 crore in 2023-24. Programme expenses took Rs 52.78 crore, with Rs 1.84 crore in depreciation and Rs 4.70 crore in other costs.
People, in other words, are the programme. A field force of salaried staff runs the surveys that the volunteers carry out.
Safeena Husain does not run the organisation day to day. The 2023-24 annual report names Maharshi Vaishnav as Chief Executive Officer. Safeena Husain sits on the board with Ganesh Natarajan, Ireena Vittal, Luis Miranda, Sumit Bose and Ujwal Thakar.
What the Safeena Husain Educate Girls record shows
Two independent evaluations sit under the Safeena Husain Educate Girls record, and both were run by IDinsight. The first covered Bhilwara district in Rajasthan between June 2015 and May 2018.
That project was the world’s first development impact bond in education. UBS Optimus Foundation put in about $270,000. The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation agreed to pay for results.
The trial covered 282 villages and 332 schools, split evenly between treatment and control. Educate Girls enrolled 768 of 837 eligible out-of-school girls, or 92%, against a target of 79%. That is 116% of the enrolment target.
On learning, the evaluators recorded 8,940 ASER levels gained against a target of 5,592. That is 160% of the learning target. Per student, the gain was 1.08 ASER levels, or 0.31 standard deviations.
The second evaluation is newer and bigger. IDinsight and Sambodhi Research and Communication tested the scale-up in Sidhi, Shahdol and Singrauli districts of eastern Madhya Pradesh. Their final report is dated November 2024.
That trial assessed 9,794 children across three rounds, in 267 schools. The baseline ran in August 2022 and the endline in February 2024.
Children in Educate Girls schools gained 4.0 ASER levels more than the control group over two years. The evaluators call that a 1.25 standard deviation effect.
What is contested or unproven
The most-quoted Educate Girls number is not a measured impact, and its own evaluators say so. The 2018 report states that the working group decided against estimating enrolments in control villages, because a household census cost too much.
Their conclusion is blunt. Unlike the learning estimates, the report says, the enrolment estimates do not give the causal effect. The 116% figure is a count against a target, not a comparison with what would have happened anyway.
The 2018 report flags a second problem. Children absent at baseline were given the lowest possible score of 3, which lifts their apparent gain later. More than two thirds of the measured difference appeared in year three alone.
The 2024 evaluation carried its own check on the enrolment count. In 2023, verifiers matched 3,519 of 3,641 newly enrolled girls to school registers, a 3.4% discrepancy. In 2024 the discrepancy was 6.8% across four states, and 19% in Madhya Pradesh.
The evaluators did not call that a fault. They noted school mergers under Madhya Pradesh’s Ek Parisar Ek Shala scheme as a possible cause, and said they were unsure. Attrition in the trial ran at 15% in control schools and 16% in treatment schools.
Two published effect sizes also differ sharply. Bhilwara in 2018 produced 0.31 standard deviations. Eastern Madhya Pradesh in 2024 produced 1.25. Neither report explains the gap, and the two used different districts, different years and a different curriculum.
Retention is reported two ways. The 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Award citation page credits Educate Girls with retention above 90%. The organisation’s own 2024-25 progress report puts retention at 85%.
Peoples Feed searched the audited accounts, both IDinsight evaluations and four award and university records on 10 September 2026. It found no published criticism, pending inquiry or disputed claim against Safeena Husain in connection with this work.
What happens next
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation elected Foundation to Educate Girls Globally to its 2025 award. Its citation recognised the organisation for addressing cultural stereotyping through the education of girls and young women.
The Audacious Project phase closed in 2025 on 1.56 million girls enrolled. The next commitment is far larger. Educate Girls has pledged to reach 10 million learners over ten years.
The recognition has followed the numbers. The London School of Economics awarded Safeena Husain an honorary doctorate on 29 May 2024. TIME named her to its Women of the Year list on 26 February 2026.
“From day one till today, it is focused on the out-of-school girl, because that’s my lived experience,” Safeena Husain told TIME in that interview. “That’s what I know, [what it] feels like to be left behind.”
| Date | What happened | Source document |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Educate Girls is founded | LSE Leading Women biography |
| June 2015 to May 2018 | Development impact bond runs in Bhilwara district, Rajasthan, across 282 villages | IDinsight DIB final evaluation report, June 2018 |
| June 2018 | Evaluators record 116% of the enrolment target and 160% of the learning target | IDinsight DIB final evaluation report |
| 2023-24 | Audited income Rs 133.96 crore, spending Rs 133.92 crore | Educate Girls Annual Report 2023-2024, audited by N. A. Shah Associates LLP |
| 29 May 2024 | LSE confers an honorary doctorate on Safeena Husain | LSE Leading Women biography |
| November 2024 | IDinsight and Sambodhi report a 1.25 standard deviation learning gain in eastern Madhya Pradesh | Evaluation of Educate Girls’ Scale-Up in India, final report |
| 2024-25 | 285,237 out-of-school girls enrolled, 85% retention reported | Educate Girls Annual Progress Report FY2024-25 |
| 2025 | Foundation to Educate Girls Globally elected to the Ramon Magsaysay Award | Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation awardee record |
| 26 February 2026 | TIME names Safeena Husain to its Women of the Year list | TIME, Women of the Year 2026 |
What this means for you: If you run a CSR budget or a state education office in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, read both evaluations. Ask any partner for a register-verified enrolment count, not a cumulative reach figure, before you sign.
Peoples Feed Insight
The two IDinsight reports do not sit easily together. Bhilwara in 2018 gave 0.31 standard deviations. Eastern Madhya Pradesh in 2024 gave 1.25, four times more, at far bigger scale. School programmes usually weaken as they grow. Three things could explain the jump. It could be a new remedial curriculum, weak control schools in Sidhi, Shahdol and Singrauli, or a short ASER scale that flatters small gains. The honest test is where the next trial runs. If Educate Girls commissions one in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh and the effect holds, the number is real.
By Soumya Verma, Senior Correspondent
About Safeena Husain
Safeena Husain is the founder and a board member of Educate Girls, registered as Foundation to Educate Girls Globally, a Section 8 company. She started it in 2007. Its FY2024-25 progress report records 285,237 out-of-school girls enrolled in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The London School of Economics gave her an honorary doctorate on 29 May 2024.
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