School of Education

Addressing Global Inequalities by Empowering Girls Through Integrated Education in Delhi’s outskirts, India

Gender equality and women's empowerment, highlighted in the UN's SDG-5, rely on education's pivotal role. Indian rural areas, and across the world, face barriers to girls' education. 132 million girls globally are out of school, many in rural regions (UNESCO). We propose to integrate education into daily life, acknowledging cultural nuances, to empower impoverished girls. Leveraging smartphone technology, with a 71% penetration in India, rising to 96% by 2040, we aim to develop edutainment applications to address educational disparities. We will organize workshops with all stakeholders, drawing from the epistemology of the Global South for the co-creation of solutions.

Amongst other things we want to educate and empower girls by using stories that elders in communities tell. These stories let people ask questions and talk to each other. We plan to create a storytelling tool that acts like an elder, guiding conversations and teaching important ideas. This tool will encourage interaction, reinforce values, and improve thinking skills. When children hear stories, they use their imagination to understand them. They imagine themselves in different situations and learn from them. By turning these stories into digital apps, we hope

to make learning more engaging for the learners. Our first challenge is to turn traditional stories into digital characters and make them interact with animated figures. Then, we'll create games and puzzles based on these stories to help girls learn.

The pump priming fund will be utilised to conduct workshops that leverage the cultural and artistic values inherent within the population to co-create education materials. The workshop with all stakeholders (educators, artists in education, and others) will debate and employ storytelling, games, and interactive schemes intricately linked to and embedded within daily life patterns. We will develop proof-of-concept prototypes to showcase their feasibility.