Child marriage is one of the major barriers to international development goals. Even today, India has 102 million child brides. Although keeping them in school is a challenge, formal education enhances girls’ ability to negotiate these key life decisions. This project will collaborate with the award-winning NGO SwaTaleem Foundation. The SwaTaleem Foundation is actively working with Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) residential schools for girls, established in the remotest and poorest parts of India, and uses a human-centered design approach to understand and address their educational challenges. This project is intended to bridge the experiences of grassroots organizations like SwaTaleem with the expertise and scholarship of Illinois by fostering the exchange of knowledge to create solutions for these issues. With the Siebel Center of Design (SCD), there will be a semester-long program to engage students and use human-centered design to develop targeted solutions for KGBV schools. Students will work remotely and participate in a two-week field experience in India. Additionally, an expert speaker from India will visit for a series of roundtable discussions and lectures to facilitate curriculum development for this program as well as discussion with a wider audience, including the Women and Gender at Global Perspectives (WGGP), College of Education, and the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI).

In collaboration with WGGP