Safeena Husain recognized as the 2023 Wise Prize for Education Laureate for their work with Educate Girls
Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, spoke at the opening of the 11th edition of the WISE Summit taking place from 28-29 November in Doha, Qatar, under the theme ‘Creative Fluency: Human Flourishing in the Age of AI’.
Her Highness Sheikha Moza said: “I want to ensure WISE is a platform for new ideas that keep pace with the changes taking place in the world and the obstacles that education faces in certain countries for reasons of which we are all too aware. There is no alternative but to innovate if we are to find solutions to intractable problems.”
During the opening plenary, Her Excellency Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani, Vice Chairperson and CEO of Qatar Foundation, was awarded the prestigious WISE Prize for Education. This is the first global award of its kind that honors an individual for an outstanding contribution to education. Husain was recognized for dedicating 16 years to building the non-profit organization focused on empowering communities for girls’ education in some of India’s hardest-to-reach villages.
Over the years, Educate Girls has mobilized more than 1.4 million girls for enrolment and supported over 1.9 million children in their learning in India. Thanks to a precision targeting method using AI, Educate Girls is able to target, in 5 years, the same number of out-of-school girls, which would otherwise require 45 years. Through a network of over 21,000 community-based champions in some of the most marginalized communities in the country, the organization has been working to break the intergenerational cycle of inequality and exclusion.
Commenting on the award, Husain said: “This is a collective win for all of us working toward girls’ education, right from the government and local communities to dedicated gender champions and our supporters. It is a testament to the array of initiatives that are actively addressing this global challenge to ensure that every girl, in every village, is in school and learning well.
“Girls’ education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet to solve some of the world’s most complex problems. We must recognize that the right to education is a girl’s inherent right – a right that must always take center stage.”