It’s not easy getting into the London School of Economics. Not only has your academic achievement to be exceptional, you must shine through your Personal Statement. Even that might not be enough. In 2024 alone, 28,000 applications were received for fewer than 2,000 places.
For those that do get in and get through the rigorous test of completing an LSE degree, success does not automatically follow. One 1990s graduate couldn’t believe her luck when she persuaded an internet start-up in San Francisco to hire her. Until it failed nine months later.
Only Safeena Husain didn’t think herself unlucky. Not at all. Not when she pinched herself, remembering that she had grown up in Delhi, in a country where millions of girls were not even able to attend school. Not when she knew that she could put the LSE degree to better use, make it a better fit for her talents. If the start-up shutdown had done one thing, it had taught Safeena that she wasn’t the right fit for the commercial world.
In fact, Safeena hadn’t stopped pinching herself since her father did what he could to make her education possible. With his blessing and support she learned, read, worked hard at studies and formed her own world view. She knew how lucky she was. Safeena had already achieved what was unimaginable for millions of uneducated Indian girls.
Remaining in San Francisco for the next 10 years, Safeena joined and then led a child family health organisation supporting disadvantaged communities in South America, Africa and Asia. Child Family Health International proved to be another invaluable education, but not a destination. Safeena resolved to return to India. Using her now extensive field and leadership experience, her ambitious aim was to bring about fundamental change on the issue that mattered to her most: the education of girls.
Back in India, Safeena set up the NGO, Educate Girls, in 2007. She soon recognised that government schools were failing girls because, as she later put it, they were ‘centrally controlled and bureaucratically managed.’ In those early years of Educate Girls, only one in a hundred girls was making it to the final year of secondary school.
At first, Safeena set up a social experiment in the education of girls in 50 villages in the Pali District of Rajasthan. Her solution required empowering parents, forming parent committees and teaching them how to do a school assessment. Safeena also believed in training and deploying volunteers who could introduce stimulating educational activities in primary schools and who would improve the engagement of the whole community with girls’ education.
Today, Educate Girls is active in 25,000 villages across not only Rajasthan, but also Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The scale, success and impact of Educate Girls in India have been outstanding. To boost options and opportunities for girls, Safeena – now supported by 3,000 employees, and 18,000 volunteers from villages across the country, all trained in how to do a school assessment – works in partnership with state governments and leverages the existing educational infrastructure to identify, enrol and keep out-of-school girls in education, whilst improving basic skills in literacy and numeracy.
The work is far from over. Safeena and Educate Girls are aiming to improve the access and quality of education for more than 15 million children by the end of 2025. Safeena has quoted Indian government figures, stating that 66 million girls are not attending high school and still, in 5 per cent of India’s villages, 40 per cent of girls are not in primary school. Enrolment has improved at primary school level, but drop-out rates of older girls going into secondary education are high. The educational opportunities of many girls continue to be limited by household chores, family responsibilities and discrimination.
Safeena Husain has accumulated awards and global recognition for her achievements; not least, the WISE Prize, an annual international award for innovative projects that address global educational challenges. In 2023, Safeena became the first Indian woman to be honoured as a WISE Prize laureate. Under Safeena’s leadership, Educate Girls also became Asia’s first TED Audacious Project ‘that encourages the world’s greatest changemakers to dream bigger.’
Like many other philanthropists, Safeena decided that she would be the change. She would not wait and hope for change to come from the deep pockets of government or wealthy individuals and organisations. Instead, she did three things: 1. Made a personal long-term commitment; 2. Devised a solution; and 3. Created a mechanism to implement it. The better choice: to bring the deep pockets as collaborators and facilitators of the philanthropy she would begin.
Lauded and applauded, praised but not phased by the work still to be done, Safeena was clear about her objective on the occasion of being awarded an honorary doctorate by the London School of Economics in May 2024. “I have experienced the power of education, and my education is what has made me who I am today,” she said. “I truly believe that we women will not be equal unless that last girl has equality. That is why we have to ensure that every girl accesses her right to an education.’’