An Indian non-profit dedicated to empowering rural girls through education has been awarded the 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s most prestigious honor.
The selection of the Foundation to Educate Girls Globally (Educate Girls) was formally announced at a global ceremony on August 31.
India, home to the world’s fourth-largest economy, has achieved rapid growth in technology and services since its independence. Yet despite these advances, glaring inequalities remain, particularly in education for girls from rural and tribal communities. In Rajasthan, India’s largest state, girls continue to record the highest illiteracy rates in the country.
Determined to confront this reality, Safeena Husain, a graduate of the London School of Economics, returned from San Francisco in 2005. After two years of research, she founded Educate Girls, a grassroots movement that mobilizes communities and government resources to bring girls back into classrooms.
Starting in Rajasthan, the organization identified the most marginalized communities and worked tirelessly to enroll out-of-school girls and keep them in classrooms until they could complete their studies. In 2015, Educate Girls broke new ground by launching the world’s first Development Impact Bond (DIB) in education, an innovative financing model that linked donor support to measurable learning outcomes.
The results were striking. From just 50 pilot schools, Educate Girls expanded to more than 30,000 villages across India’s underserved regions. Over two million girls have benefited, with a retention rate of more than 90%. Local volunteers, known as Team Balika (Team for the Girl Child), went door-to-door to identify out-of-school girls, address parental concerns, and assist with documentation. By 2018, the DIB project had exceeded its learning targets by 160% and enrollment targets by 116%.
Beyond school enrollment, the foundation launched Pragati, an open-schooling program for women aged 15–29 who missed out on formal education. What began with 300 learners has now grown to more than 31,500 women completing their education and unlocking new opportunities.
Reflecting on the mission, Husain said: “Girls’ education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet to solve some of the world’s most difficult problems. It is one of the best investments a country can make, impacting health, nutrition, employment, and nine of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”
In honoring Educate Girls, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation praised its bold fight against systemic and societal barriers to education. The citation lauded the organization’s role in “challenging tradition, shifting mindsets, and showing that education is not a privilege, but a right that reshapes and rebuilds lives.”
