Development of national women scholarship program

Abstract

The idea of developing a national scholarship for women which helps them in realising their full potential and also helps trigger a social change is rooted in the fact that women across India still need that extra support to build on their talents and abilities. This report briefs on the effort that was put in to help understand how this kind of scholarship can help and can be launched. At the start itself, the scope has been narrowed to providing scholarship and mentorship support and though the paths to achieve women progress remain several, the focus of this study remains as stated above. Before launching into the scholarship model, an effort is made to understand the evolution of women’s stature in India. How the history has helped shape today’s women is discussed in brief and trends across decades have been mapped which led to major incidents related to women in Indian history. Identification of world events which caused an effect on the Indian scenario and which helped progress or hindered the development is also discussed. Based on this understanding, the scope is redeveloped and the need for such intervention is explained. Education as a means to support girl child and bring about a change through triggering of social responsibility at a young age is what drives this scholarship. Also, a look at the current capabilities and limitations help in further narrowing the scope of the study and we focus on specific age group and specific areas. The next step was to identify the current different initiatives that are providing same/similar support to the same/similar target segment. Broadly three different of categories are seen: Organizations which run non-profit educational institutes, Organizations which have their own premises in which they run programmes for students from different schools and organizations which travel school to school and provide support at the school’s premises. A detailed understanding of these models with different examples is developed. Based on this, a model for our scholarship is proposed which proposes an arm’s distance scholarship programme with integrated mentorship and soft skills workshops. Interaction with the students and NGO official has helped gauge the interest levels and the actual needs of the students at which this scholarship is targeted. Identification of the limitations of the students and their inputs on the scholarship helped in making the model more relevant and friendly to the needs of the student. Next the implementation efforts undertaken are elaborated and the various issues that came up have been detailed. A further way to overcome these issues have been suggested amongst which partnering with Organizations is suggested. An ideal partner and qualifying method to identify a good partner is the next step discussed. Finally the current stage of the project is elaborated on and future course of action is sketched. In a nutshell, this project serves as foundation on which further work to implement a scholarship can be build upon. The future work would gain substantially from the experiences shared in this report and can go ahead with the learning from this work and make suitable changes based on additional learning that will come across in delivering on this ambitious project.