MILAAN FOUNDATION: TRANSFORMING ADOLESCENT LIVES IN RURAL INDIA

In a conversation with IThe Daily Guardian, Dhirendra Pratap Singh, Co-founder & CEO of Milaan Foundation, shares insights into transforming adolescent lives through education, empowerment, and gender equality.

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Q.How many adolescent girls and boys have benejited from the Milaan Foundation's programs since its inception?

A. Since 2007, Milaan has worked with over 100,000 adolescent girls and boys through its various community-focused, evidence-based interventions, and engaged with over 500,000 community members as allies for gender progressive norms and narratives, creating pathways for adolescents to be educated, healthy, and safe.

Q. What is the demographic breakdown (age, location, socio-economic status) ofthe individuals impacted by your organization?

A. Milaan works with and for children and young people between the ages of 5 - 25, from historically socially, and economically marginalized communities in rural India. Within the broader bracket, 80% of our program interventions are primarily focused on and for adolescent girls in rural communities of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka, with families living below the poverty line.

Q. Which cities/regions do you primarily operate in, and what percentage of cases come from urban vs. rural areas?

Pradesh and Karnataka. Most of our cases come from rural areas. We have offices in Lucknow and Varanasi for UP, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, and Hubli in Karnataka. We work mainly in rural areas - villages, with roughly 20% of the girls coming from urban/periurban geographies.

Q.Are there specijic hotspots for child marriage or adolescent vulnerability that your organization targets?

A. The states we work in have the highest population of adolescent girls and the lowest human development indices-UP and MP rank in the bottom three states across the country. In Karnataka, we work in northern Karnataka, which is the economically and socially most underdeveloped and poorest part of Southern India.

Q.What is the success rate of your education and empowerment programs in preventing child marriages?