i-Saksham: Empowering Young Women Leaders in Bihar

About i-Saksham

i-saksham education youth NGO rural bihar about

In early 2013, while visiting one of the left-wing extremism affected villages of Chakai block of Jamui District in Bihar, a young Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellow astonishingly read this on the walls of a dilapidated school classroom-“If you go to vote, you will be killed.” During the course of another 2 years, the fellow witnessed the implication of this extent of public institutional fragility unfolding in many ways - young girls carrying firewood on their delicate heads, adolescent girls in Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya subjected to several hardships, and community blaming the government for everything.

The fellow realized that these communities, specially girls and young women need significant and sustainable change. This could come only through their direct leadership to solve their own issues and not by relying on external aid. Hence, four friends came together and i-Saksham was co-founded in 2015.

i-Saksham means ‘I am capable’. The idea was driven by the core belief that enabling young women’s leadership (making them ‘Saksham) through education can drive sustainable social change. Hence the motto “सीखें| सिखाएं||”