“Earlier, I couldn’t speak in front of everyone. Now I answer fearlessly “
Priti, a Team Balika volunteer from a village in Uttar Pradesh, describes one of the changes she has seen in herself since she began volunteering with Educate Girls.
Hundreds of kilometres away, in a village in Rajasthan, Team Balika Nagina speaks about something strikingly similar. She remembers a time when speaking in front of a group felt unfamiliar. Today, she is comfortable participating in meetings, travelling for training and speaking with families in her community.
Priti and Nagina are two of several thousand. Since 2007, more than 55,000 community volunteers, known as Team Balika, have dedicated their time to promote girls\u2019 education with Educate Girls. Team Balika volunteers emerge from the communities they serve, guided by the belief of \u2018My village, my problem, I am the solution\u2019. They help identify out-of-school girls, encourage families to enrol their daughters in schools, and act as advocates for education within communities that often face deep-rooted social and economic barriers. Most Team Balika volunteers have grown up witnessing the very challenges they now work to address.
Conversations with current and former Team Balika volunteers raised a question: \u201cWhat Impact Might Volunteering Have On The Volunteers Themselves?\u201d
The Team Balika describe being pushed beyond their comfort zones – speaking up in village meetings, interacting with Panchayati Raj Institutions, or simply knocking on doors and starting conversations with families. Visiting the villages with these volunteers offers a glimpse of just how challenging it is to take that first step outside a familiar world.
For Nagina, the barriers were not unfamiliar. She had hoped to pursue a teaching program but could not afford the fees. Before joining Team Balika, she had little experience navigating spaces beyond her immediate surroundings.
Volunteering began to change that. The role required her to travel, attend trainings organised by Educate Girls, and speak with parents about their daughters’ education. Gradually, the unfamiliar became familiar.
For Nagina, the change was not simply about becoming better as a volunteer but about discovering a confidence that she had not previously experienced. For many, joining Team Balika was their first opportunity to be heard, trusted, or recognised beyond the household. This gain in confidence is only part of the story. Volunteers also spoke about something equally important: recognition.
Sarita had only just passed her Grade 12 when she joined as a volunteer, on the insistence of her mother. Years later, a former teacher told the school staff: \u201cThe girl we once taught is sitting before us on a chair today \u2014 it feels good to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Sarita, that recognition was a powerful validation of her efforts. For many volunteers, it signalled that their voice had weight. They were no longer only participating in community life but were helping shape it. Parents pointed to their village Team Balika when encouraging their own daughters to continue school. Younger girls watched them travel independently or speak confidently in public. Other young people grew curious about volunteering too \u2014 including boys, who saw adult men standing up for girls’ rights.
None of this came easily. Volunteers spoke about the difficulty of convincing parents who questioned the value of education. Others were questioned for attending meetings and trainings without being paid. For young women like Vandana, even moving through the community for this work could invite comments and scrutiny. Over time, she learned to let those voices recede into the background and focus on the work itself.
Many, like her, have continued despite these challenges. Why?
Part of the answer lies in their sense of purpose. As Vandana put it: \u201cIf a girl fights for another girl, then naturally, society will change.\u201d The work mattered to them because the issue mattered to them. But purpose alone doesn’t sustain long-term unpaid work. Volunteers also spoke about the relationships they built, the skills they gained, and the sense of identity they developed. As Nagina reflects: \u201c…Earlier we worked only at the village level, now we get the chance to go to the office… We had never left our village before; now we’re experiencing different trainings and new places.\u201d
The journeys of Team Balika volunteers have taken many different directions. Anamika Joshi\u2019 schooling was interrupted after Grade 8 because her family could not afford to continue it; she eventually resumed her education with support from her sister. Team Balika became one of her first opportunities to step outside the boundaries that had shaped her life. Today, she works as a Volunteer Management Associate at Educate Girls.
Another volunteer with the same first name, Anamika Singh’s journey, took a different route. The eldest of four sisters from a village in Madhya Pradesh, she joined Team Balika while in Grade 12, curious about how an organisation worked. This path eventually led to the Gandhi Fellowship in Bihar and to her current role as a Program Coordinator at Educate Girls.
Some of them have continued in community development, while others have moved into fellowships, further education or professional roles. What connects their stories is not where they went next, but what volunteering made possible along the way: greater confidence, new skills, wider exposure and a stronger sense of their own voice and identity.
The strength of community volunteer models like Team Balika lies not only in the awareness they create or the girls they help enrol. It also lies in the people they help shape along the way. Perhaps this is the change behind the change: volunteers step forward to support girls\u2019 education, and in doing so, many begin to see themselves differently too. That change then travels back into the community through the confidence, voice and example they carry with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Earlier, I couldn’t speak in front of everyone. Now I answer fearlessly “ Priti, a Team Balika volunteer from a village in Uttar Pradesh, describes one of the changes she has seen in herself since she began volunteering with Educate Girls. Hundreds of kilometres away, in a village in Rajasthan, Team Balika Nagina speaks about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6929,"featured_media":18843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18842"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18851,"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18842\/revisions\/18851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educategirls.ngo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}