Educate A Girl & Transform Society

10 years ago

Thank you to everyone who helped to support our Shobha’s Home For Girls & Women Fundraiser this past Wednesday. Our team is humbled & grateful for each one of you. It was a great night full of laughter, some tears, food, wine, henna, hair, makeup & massages.

Even if you were unable to attend this super event we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss Shobha Tummala’s speech & are sharing it with you here.

“Thank you everyone for coming tonight to support this wonderful cause! I am so proud & honored to represent the Shobha’s Home For Girls & Women & to also help support the organization that runs its operations. You do not know what a vital step you are taking by just being here tonight & showing your support. Because of people like you the 80 girls that live at the home are off the streets & in a loving and nurturing home.

I wanted to share some scary statistics with you about why the work we are doing at the home is so vital.

There are 150 million girls that become victims of sexual violence every year.
Of the 150 million girls, 50% of the sexual assaults happen to girls under the age of 15.

So, when a girl is orphaned in India, the likelihood they are going to be trafficked, assaulted, or even killed are very high which is why it is even more important to get them off the street. There are not as many government agencies or programs in place to help these kids in general that are orphaned.

One of the main missions of the organization that runs the home is to not only give the girls a place to live, but to make sure they are educated. They have set up a free school right next to the home that not only the girls of this home go to, but also an additional 350 girls come to every day. Every single girl that lives in the home has passed the national exam that they have to take to go the next grade. Not only have they just passed, but many have passed with flying colors & are in the top of their class.

Why I felt so passionate to give to this home was because of their emphasis on education in addition to providing food and shelter. When you educate a child, you have changed their life forever. When you educate a girl, you have helped transform the society they live in.

Educated girls are more than 2x likely to send their own children to school.
Educated girls also tend to marry 4 years later in life & have fewer children that are healthier.
A child born to a literate mother is 50% more likely to survive past the age of 5.
1 year more of education means that the girl can earn 10-20% more income.
Women that work put back 90% of their income to making their families better compared to 40-50% for men.
In India, if they were to enroll just 1% more girls in secondary school, its gdp would rise by $5.5 billion dollars.

So you can understand the impact of not only taking these girls off the street for their lives, but then educating these girls to help transform the societies they live in!

All the ticket proceeds & the money that has been donated through our website is going towards the Shobha’s Home For Girls & Women endowment. For those of you that don’t know how an endowment works, they will never touch the actual money. They will only use the interest they make from the money to run the operations of the home. I went to go visit the home in December & look over their accounts & how they are doing. I am excited to say that they have done such an amazing job with their resources & other donations we have gotten, that the interest that has accrued from the funds we have already given to them still have not been touched.

We have set up a letter writing station & also a Skype message station if you want to say hello to the girls. I know that any tips/advice/jokes/stories you share with them will go a long way to motivate them to achieve!

We have also set up a register in case you want to purchase any products [tonight], 25% of the product price will go towards the endowment or if you just want to donate, you can do that also!

Thank you all for your support! It means so much that you are here today!”