Priya’s family came to Delhi three years ago from Uttar Pradesh. The family was forced to flee their village after a fire destroyed their home and they lost everything. Priya’s father now works as a labourer in a grocery shop, and her mother prepares lunches for office workers.

As her parents have to work long hours, Priya often prepares dinner for the family and helps out with household chores, which doesn’t leave her any time to study. Her parents’ meagre income is not enough to support a family of six, and the heavy workload has affected her father’s health. Priya worries that the stress of paying for education is causing his health to deteriorate. She was so worried about him that, at the age of fourteen, she started to skip school to work from home stitching clothes to support the family income.

But Priya loves to learn and to explore new things. She is a brilliant student and achieves top marks in almost all her subjects. Her ambition is to become a doctor.

‘My dream is to serve and help the poor people of my country,’ she writes.

The CGEF works with many schools across India, where an estimated 8.1 million children are out of school and the pressures of poverty force many disadvantaged parents to take their children out of secondary school. When families can’t afford to educate all their children, it is often the girls who lose out. For every 100 boys enrolled in secondary education in India there are 81 girls.

We’re delighted to have begun working with an excellent School in Delhi this year, and look forward to watching Ayesha and Priya flourish under their care.