Educate Girls receives the 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Award for restoring school access to millions of girls across India. Founders, field teams and 55,000 volunteers honoured for community-driven impact.
Educate Girls Wins Prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award 2025
Indian non-profit Educate Girls has been awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award 2025 in recognition of its sustained work to bring millions of out-of-school girls back into the classroom and to improve learning outcomes in rural India. The foundation dedicated the honour to its field coordinators, volunteers and youth mentors, saying the award recognises the collective effort of communities that have driven change at scale.
Founded in 2007, Educate Girls works across more than 30,000 villages in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. With a network of over 55,000 community-based volunteers, the organisation has helped more than 2 million girls return to school and supported over 2.4 million children with remedial learning programmes, according to the award citation and the organisation’s statement. These figures underline a model that combines door-to-door outreach, local mentors and partnerships with government schools to remove social and practical barriers to schooling.
At the awards ceremony in Manila, founder Safeena Husain said the recognition belongs to “our girls” and to the parents, teachers and volunteers who made the progress possible. CEO Gayatri Nair Lobo framed the honour as a spur for the next stage of scale-up: Educate Girls aims to reach 10 million learners by 2035 through its 10X10 ambition, expanding remedial learning, mentoring and community mobilisation while deepening government collaboration.
