Thoughts from the founder

As a sixteen year old, living in Singapore, I am lucky to have been exposed to many opportunities as a result of the school I go to and the environment I live in. However, as a result of this, I also recognize the significant inequalities in the areas of education and women’s rights around the world.

Children in developed countries have access to strong public and private educational offerings and have access to tutors who help them prepare better for tests, college and beyond. This got me thinking about the people who do not have the luxury of going to a tutoring center. I am talking about less fortunate people, who cannot afford any form of tutoring or even basic education. As someone from India, I continuously see evidence of this problem - I see schools not having the resources to cater to the number of students, and many families not being able to afford school altogether. This is more pronounced with girls since they are deprioritized - it estimated that over 130 million girls worldwide don’t go to school. The COVID pandemic also highlighted the inequalities that students face when it comes to education. For example, many students are struggling to do well in online classes, because they may need to share limited resources or don’t have access to the required technology, causing a greater divergence in educational outcomes.

When I was a child, my parents introduced me to Shanti Bhavan, a residential school in India focused on dis-advantaged children who would normally not have had a chance to receive a higher education. At Shanti Bhavan, these children have excelled, gone to college, found job and are able to care of their families. This opened my eyes to the importance of good education and led me to wonder how well public schools in countries like India are able to teach their students. The current student to teacher ratio in Indian public schools is 30:1, which means that teachers are unable to give students individualized attention. When students fall behind, they need help to fully understand a concept. Unfortunately, not every student is able to ask a sibling, friend or family for help in these circumstances and don’t have financial resources for outside help. 

These realizations led me to set up Her Mind. Her Mind was created as a way to advocate for an even more marginalized group of students - girls in low income households. I want to make sure that those girls have a chance to thrive, whether it be from their schools or homes. I want Her Mind to be a safe space that offers nurturing and education - at its core, it is a simple concept based on women around the world contributing two to five hours a week tutoring and mentoring dis-advantaged girls around the world. Through our various initiatives, I also realized that the availability of basic technology is still a core issue for many of these students. In order to receive online tutoring, they must have access to tablets or computers. As a result, we have prioritized the raising of funds to provide such technology to government schools and have worked with partners to make the goal of providing these students with a basic education an achievable one.