Education Is Power: Community-based Lessons From Rural Bihar

ZealGrit's team in rural Bihar

"Take the time it takes; it takes less time." To me, this proverb demonstrates the necessity of taking the effort to tackle large challenges when it would be easier to avoid them. Ignoring issues will only lead to greater problems down the road.

I have only recently joined the ZealGrit Foundation as a research intern, but so far, my work has brought me across many impactful narratives and studies on the importance of investing in the education of girls and women. Education does not need to be through a formal setting, but can come through lived experiences and eye-opening conversations that develop knowledge focusing on health and nutrition literacy. Our blog section is full of the stories of individual women across Supaul who gain agency in their own lives through access to such information. And in academia, time and time again, researchers have found that supporting women’s health and nutrition literacy is a crucial step towards improving the lives of generations to come.

I do not need to tell you about the significance of education. Throughout history and across the world, education has been a critical component of allowing people to consider the state of the world around them, as well as their own capacities to create change. It is a formative and empowering tool for providing individuals with agency that they would otherwise not have access to.

Education is a critical way for young women and mothers to gain power for themselves. When not supported with a proper education, adolescent girls have a higher likelihood of adolescent pregnancy and childbirth, worse nutrition practices for their children, and less bargaining power in their day-to-day lives.

Mya at her desk

The benefits of education do not only come out of a classroom setting, but through community-based approaches as well. A recent case story is of Neetu (a mother from rural Bihar). She is a mother of six children with a newborn son. When she first began meeting with a field associate from ZealGrit, she had little knowledge of proper infant nutrition and health practices. However, after regular follow-ups and continued discussions, she started to show great interest in making healthy decisions for her baby, as well as for her older children and for herself. She also shared her new knowledge with her friend and husband, encouraging them to actively engage with these topics as well. Neetu’s enthusiasm for learning shows us how community-based facilitation of knowledge has given her the tools to use better nutritional practices for all her children, for herself, and has also inspired others in her life to do the same.

This is what I believe ZealGrit’s work is all about. Conversations encouraging learning among adolescent girls and mothers are powerful tools. They are flint and steel. Flint and steel that allows them to ignite the spark of embracing lessons in all walks of their lives. Hopefully, this fire to learn will spread across their communities through them.

It’s not a problem of whether education is key or not: it is. Neetu’s story exemplifies how being given the tools for learning has had a cascading influence on others in her life as well. Then, if it is known to be so necessary for the success of our communities, why does it feel as though our own systems have seemed to have given up on ensuring education for these women?

While many studies have found evidence stating the significance of education in supporting the development of female agency, these ideas are well-documented but rarely practiced widely enough to make real change. I urge you to consider what social, cultural, or physical burdens young women face in their lives, and how these ideologies on maternal roles and freedoms have allowed for communities to accept the fact that women don’t receive proper education, when it is truly an injustice that they do not.

The current state of undereducation among girls and women in Bihar is already frightening. We need to tackle the problem of education in girls and women now, or it will only lead to more extreme issues in the future.