As India observes National Girl Child Day on 24th January, the Centre for Transforming India (CFTI) is drawing attention to the role of safe school mobility through its Savitrichya Leki Chalalya Pudhe initiative, which identified underprivileged girl students who travel long distances to school and supported them with a total of 35,000 bicycles pan India. It is supported by self-defense training and local follow-ups that aim to increase the literacy rate and encourage safer commutes. The conversations around girls’ education increasingly point to a reality that goes beyond enrollment figures. For many girls in rural and tribal regions, simply reaching school remains a daily challenge. An estimated 10–15 percent of school-going children in India walk more than three kilometers each day, with the burden falling disproportionately on adolescent girls due to safety concerns, fatigue, and difficult terrain.
India has an estimated 250 million school-going children, many of whom face long and challenging daily commutes to reach school, particularly in tribal, rural & hilly regions where public transport is limited or nonexistent. UDISE+ 2022–23 data shows that over 40 percent of rural students travel more than one kilometer to attend school, while 15–20 percent in remote tribal areas walk over three kilometers, often navigating isolated terrain, forests, rivers, or flood-prone routes. These conditions disproportionately affect adolescent girls and contribute to rising dropout rates in Maharashtra; girls’ dropout has increased from 2.4 percent to 2.9 percent, driven by safety concerns, fatigue, and seasonal migration.
“Girls’ education cannot be strengthened by enrollment alone; it requires us to remove the everyday barriers that quietly push girls out of the system,” said Amit Deshpande, Chief Operating Officer, Centre for Transforming India (CFTI). “Through this initiative, we are addressing the challenge at its root, ensuring that distance, safety, and access no longer determine a girl’s future. When girls can reach school with dignity and confidence, education stops being fragile and starts becoming irreversible.”
As India marks National Girl Child Day, CFTI’s work underscores the need to view education outcomes through a wider lens, one that recognizes infrastructure, safety, and dignity as essential conditions for learning. Ensuring that girls can travel to school without fear remains a critical step toward equitable and uninterrupted education in rural India.
About CFTI (Centre For Transforming India) is a registered non-profit trust established in 2009 under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882, and is recognized by NITI Aayog. Motivated by a core vision to transform the villages in India, the organization seeks to bring dreams to life and give wings to aspirations, thereby transforming their communities and country. CFTI is staffed by an enthusiastic body of more than 700 volunteers and an experienced board to focus its mission on social development across vital sectors: education, skill development, water and sanitation, women’s empowerment, health, and sports.
CFTI has successfully demonstrated measurable grassroots impact across India’s most underserved regions, such as Aspirational Districts, through its holistic development approach to strengthen communities at many levels. Its education-focused work continues to remain at the core, with renovation of government schools through the My School, My Pride initiative with modern classrooms, rebuilt toilets, computer and science labs, solar panels, RO systems, sports material, and academic kits. In addition, over 85,000 lives have been impacted with the distribution of more than 35,000 bicycles to girls, and over 100 safe, sustainable pucca houses for tribal communities. Complementing this, CFTI is strengthening water security in drought-prone Coastal Maharashtra through the construction of check dams in Shenwai to provide year-round clean water, with plans to scale up this successful model to more than 100 villages to address the long-term issue of water scarcity.
Beyond education, CFTI drives community empowerment through dedicated women’s skill development programs and SHGs benefiting 5,000+ women and sports-led development through major infrastructure such as the Veshvi basketball court serving 3,000 people, the Pondicherry court impacting 2,000+, and a full-fledged sports complex in Nagaon. Having been further strengthened by its COVID-19 relief outreach to 700,000 people, CFTI continues to bridge critical gaps in water, sanitation, livelihood, and infrastructure, delivering sustainable, village-level transformation. Through Project Dhristi, CFTI is restoring vision and dignity for underserved communities by distributing over 1 lakh spectacles and funding numerous cataract surgeries, ensuring clear sight for children, adults, and the elderly alike.
CFTI’s work has earned the trust of several respected corporate and institutional partners, including clients such as PPFAS Asset Management Pvt. Ltd., a socially responsible financial institution that leverages its CSR mandate to drive meaningful, long-term impact in rural India. The strategic partnerships, especially with CFTI, have strengthened digital and academic infrastructure in the underserved schools and transformed learning for over 2,500 students
CFTI’s work is strengthened by the invaluable partnerships it has with a large number of PSUs, corporates, and HNIs through whose trust and collaboration CFTI can create impact and scale across the most underserved communities of India.
