Empowering Young Girls from Underserved Backgrounds through Digital Access: A Capacity Building Program (Privilege Fellowship) by Lex Foundation

Abstract

This paper describes a project by Lex Foundation called Privilege Fellowship, aimed at Capacity Building and Women Empowerment by providing focused mentorship through professionals from industries and financial aid for girls’ education from 11th Class to Graduation.

Privilege Fellowship is a capacity building & women empowerment initiative of Lex Foundation. This provides financial help and focused mentorship to girl students from weak socio-economic backgrounds.

Under the Privilege Fellowship program, Girls students get financial support for their education from 11th class to graduation and focused mentorship from professionals from different fields for their overall development, academic and non-academic. This initiative aims to transform girls from low backgrounds into dignified women empowered with education and financial independence. It also contributes towards poverty alleviation, gender equality, literacy and inclusive society.

This paper further describes how technology (virtual connections) has become a critical infrastructure in terms of reaching out to students and their parents located in different places across the country. It facilitates the selection of students, regular interaction with them and their parents, conducting weekly sessions to educate and mentor these students by professionals located at distant places in India and abroad, and providing financial aid directly into the bank accounts of the students selected for the program.

Further, in the introduction section, the paper describes the deep-rooted social issue of gender-based inequality that prevents girls' education, resulting in the continuation of the cycle of poverty in underprivileged communities. It discusses a strategic intervention called the Privilege Fellowship undertaken by the Lex Foundation to address this social issue. This section also talks about how technology has made it possible to reach out to different stakeholders virtually, which otherwise would not have been possible. The following section of the paper describes and illustrates with some pictures how the intervention was implemented and enabled stakeholders to connect with the help of technology (virtual connections) to conduct educational sessions. The subsequent section describes how this model works, followed by paragraphs on measuring success and testimonials from some of the beneficiaries from the states of Kashmir, Haryana, and Delhi.

Next it describes the digital infrastructure needed to use the technology for virtual connects, Financing the Model, Scaling of the model to enhance the impact in more geographical areas followed by a conclusion.