The Eros Foundation Becomes A Patron Of Educate girls

The Eros Foundation has become a patron of Educate Girls to promote education for girls from Sanchore Block, in Jalore District of Rajasthan. The Foundation will support the work of Educate Girls in over a hundred villages reaching out to 15,000 girls.

Educate Girls works to reform government schools for girls’ education by leveraging existing community and government resources. Following a sustainable and community driven program, Educate Girls strives to bridge the gender gap present in Rajasthan. Since 2008, the organization has impacted the lives of over 200,000 girls in 2 districts and aims to positively impact the lives of 1.6 million children by 2016. Along with education, the NGO focuses on improving school infrastructure for girls, bringing about community ownership and advocating girl leadership.

Eros Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Eros International Media Ltd (EIML), a leading global company in the Indian film entertainment industry has announced an association with Educate Girls. Kishore Lulla, Chairman and CEO of Eros International is delighted to be supporting such a well established and far reaching project. As the aim of Eros Foundation is to provide a better future for underprivileged communities across India, the collaboration with Educate Girls was ideal. “We believe that every individual has the right to dream, to learn and to aspire to a better future. This makes our partnership with Educate Girls ideal” says Kaushi Silva, Education Director of the Eros Foundation.

Educate Girls targets 100% enrollment, higher attendance and improved learning outcomes for all girls by creating ‘Community Ownership’ of government schools. As Safeena Husain, Executive Director of Educate Girls explains: “India has the largest illiterate population in the world. Unfortunately most of those who lack education are women living in rural areas. Educate Girls works hard on enrolling and retaining girls in schools because to educate a girl is to empower her community.”

The strategy of parent based School Management Committees to facilitate school development has proved to be very successful. To overcome the challenge of working with first generation learners whose parents are unable to impact learning outcomes the organization created village based volunteers recognized as Team Balika. Team Balika are champions for girls’ education, they spread awareness on the importance of educating girls, strengthen school management and improve learning results.

Over the last five years Educate Girls has won several awards, such as the EdelGive Social Innovation Honors 2011 and the World Banks’ Development Marketplace Award 2011. In 2012, the Womanity Foundation also felicitated the founder Safeena Husain with the WomenChangeMaker Award.

As patrons of Educate Girls, Eros Foundation will support the implementation of all program activities in Sanchore block in Jalore district of Rajasthan. Sanchore block consist of 122 villages, the project will cover 314 schools spread across these villages and enrich the lives of over 15,000 girls. The block also has a strength of 122 Team Balika, one per village and 2198 parents who will be trained to improve the quality of education meted out.

About

Eros International Media Ltd (Eros International)

Eros International Media Ltd. is a global player within the rapidly expanding Indian media and entertainment arena. It operates on a vertically integrated studio model controlling content as well as distribution & exploitation across all formats globally, including cinema, digital, home entertainment and television syndication. Eros International is part of the Eros International plc group which was the first Indian media Company to get listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange. Eros International has rich experience of over three decades in establishing a global platform for Indian cinema. The Company has a competitive advantage through its extensive and growing movie library comprising of over 1,100 films which include Hindi, Tamil and other regional language films for home entertainment distribution. Eros International has successfully built a robust and dynamic business model by combining the release of new films every year with the exploitation of a valuable film library, making it undisputedly one of the largest content owners in the business.

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