RGF initiative for Muslim girls

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, May 20: The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) has embarked upon a project for the upliftment of the educationally and socially backward Muslim girls. A pilot project has been launched for supporting four educational centres for adolescent girls in the predominantly Muslim-populated Yakutpura in Hyderabad. The RGF marks the death anniversary of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi falling on Wednesday.

The project being run by the RGF in collaboration with an NGO Mahita aims at providing the girl children with an opportunity to experience normal childhood. About 400 girls learn literacy, craft and language skills. In fact, in a similar effort, Project Darakht-e-Ilm was launched by the RGF in the Muslim-dominated Jogeshwari area of Mumbai. The project supports non-formal education for the illiterate and semi-literate young women, in order to help them to improve their skills and self-confidence.

Rajiv Gandhi Foundation Chairperson Sonia Gandhi has been giving special attention to establishing libraries for potential readers in villages and slum-clusters. It has become a popular project. The end objective of setting up such libraries is improving the quality of education for children in the marginalised communities and expanding the learning capacity of the people. There is also an emphasis on the out-of-the-school learning for life skills and personality development. So far, the RGF has set up 1,464 village and slum libraries across 22 states.

In a related project, an effort is being made to help the militancy-affected children in Manipur. Girl children are among the most vulnerable. Education of a girl child has greater chances of being sacrificed due to poverty. In its intervention, the RGF has started projects in Senapati and Ukhrul region of Manipur for poverty-alleviation and education of the girl child. The primary objective of the project is to remove the economic barrier and to enable the poor families to send their girl children to school through a poverty-alleviation support. It is based on revolving credit for the affected families for income-generating activities. The project includes a grant of Rs 3,500 for one girl child from each family to meet the expenses of school fees, stationery and uniform in the first year.