Educate a girl, change the world: Yuwa School

Educate a girl, change the world.

Your donation today will support girls at Yuwa School in rural Jharkhand, a region where 6 out of 10 girls drop out of school and become child brides.

“Growing up as a girl has always been challenging. The society we live in has always set up boundaries for us, full stops for our thoughts, opinions, and dreams. It's the men who decide our past, are deciding our present, and will decide our future. They think girls are a burden on them who need to be passed from family to family, and that's how it is always. But I am here to change lives.” - Aditi, 17-year-old Yuwa School student

How can a girl escape child marriage when the odds are stacked against her? A quality education, strong mentors, a network of support--and an indomitable will.

At Yuwa, we invest deeply in girls’ education and leadership, which will have a ripple effect in the future. A girl who grows up to be a confident, capable, and financially independent woman will make choices that can lift her entire community out of poverty and turn the tide toward gender equality.

Your donation will go directly towards supporting Yuwa School’s education team's salaries, including ten full-time teachers, Principal, Child Development Officer, and Education Director.

$50 will sponsor the cost of one girl’s education for two weeks

$100 will sponsor the cost of one girl’s education for one month

$250 will sponsor the cost of one girl’s education for an academic term

$1200 will sponsor the cost of one girl’s education for an entire year

Would you prefer to donate in Indian Rupees? CLICK HERE !

Want to take a peek inside Yuwa School? Click here to check out a student-led tour of the school!

About Yuwa

Yuwa is a community-based non-profit organization that uses sport and education to enable girls in rural Jharkhand, India to take their futures into their own hands. Yuwa’s three interconnected programs--sports teams, workshops, and an all-girls school--represent a single, holistic, intensive strategy to give girls the confidence, leadership skills, education, and tools they need to break out of poverty. By creating strong networks of girls’ teams led by female coaches, Yuwa uses positive peer pressure and female mentors to create a counter-culture that fosters and protects girls’ rights, health, and education. Yuwa maintains close relationships with participants’ families and community members by conducting regular home visits and meetings to respond to domestic violence incidents, encourage support of and pride in their daughters’ goals, and mitigate the risks of child marriage and trafficking.

Yuwa’s programmatic depth results in life-changing impact for each participant, enabling them to break out of the cycle of poverty—permanently.

Aarti's story of change – and never, ever giving up

Aarti joined a Yuwa football team when she was 11 years old. Her parents, both illiterate subsistence farmers, were surprised that their daughter wanted to play, but supported her. Her neighbors mocked Aarti for wearing shorts and playing “a boys’ game.” She came to play anyway, every single day.

“My community thinks negatively about girls. There are different standards if they come back home late at night, or wear different kinds of clothes. These are considered bad manners, and against society. As a young girl, I lived like a bird in a cage--no rights, no voice, no support. I was shy, timid, and lacking in confidence.”

Aarti joined Yuwa School in 2015. She became a football coach for girls in her village so she could pay her own school fees. A year into coaching, Aarti had become one of Yuwa’s most improved coaches. Opportunities quickly followed: she competed in Donosti Cup in Spain, was selected for a sport leadership exchange in the US, and met Marcelo from RealMadrid.

Aarti’s curiosity, work ethic, and perfect attendance resulted in consistently good grades at Yuwa School. Her undiagnosed dyslexia, however, made it difficult for her to achieve high marks on national board exams.

As a result, Aarti was not accepted to any Indian universities, which prioritize board exam results. By the time she graduated in 2021, Aarti had been accepted to a number of US colleges with partial scholarships: St. Michael’s College, Curry College, Ithaca College. Without more generous scholarship, however, Aarti’s dreams were still out of reach.

In the gap year Aarti was forced to take after graduation, she was elevated to the position of Football Coordinator at Yuwa, in which she began mentoring other youth coaches. She continued to relentlessly apply to universities.

Finally, in 2022, Aarti received the letter she’d been working to achieve: admission & full five-year scholarship to Asian University for Women--a competitive liberal arts college in Bangladesh--to study Economics.