The Rukmini Foundation: Leveraging Community Engagement for Access to Education

In Girls' Education, Uncategorized by Kate Mallory

The Rukmini Foundation: Leveraging Community Engagement for Access to Education

October 11, 2024 | International Day of the Girl Child | Kate Mallory and Bibhuti Aryal

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Puja Pudasaini, Rukmini Foundation mentor

The Rukmini Foundation, a GCE-US member based in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, is an organization that works to empower girls through education while addressing child marriage and gender inequality. In its 2023 Annual Report, Rukmini Foundation highlights all of its accomplishments and what its goals are moving forward. GCE-US Senior Fellow, Kate Mallory, interviewed Bibhuti Aryal, Founder and President of the Rukmini Foundation, about the organization’s background and impact. 

What was the impetus for the steps you took to founding Rukmini?

The genesis of Rukmini Foundation begins in Nepal with my mother. I was born in Nepal and spent my early childhood there, but my mother brought me to the United States along with my siblings when I was just a child as she was completing a Masters in Public Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. Eventually, I ended up staying in the US, and growing up I had always wanted to go back and visit my home country. But it was never convenient and immigration challenges meant that it was easier to focus on my education in the US than thinking about home in Nepal. Many years passed, and I eventually finished high school, college, and university. After that, I started working and then the focus turned to my career.

In late 2010, after living in the US for 20+ years, I finally became a permanent resident, and it gave me enough confidence to travel back to Nepal without worrying about any immigration issues. I had a limited memory of my time in Nepal by this point, but I was fully aware of the economic challenges and socioeconomic issues. However, it is one thing to be aware of something and another to be confronted with it in person. Seeing too many occasions of young children, especially girls who should have been in school, having to work to support their families, was something that affected me deeply. I had always thought about somehow using my American education and professional experience to give back to Nepal, and this visit motivated me to want to do something. That something was to start a foundation to help raise funds to support girls whose families had economic challenges that prevented them from going to school. 

The foundation is named after my great-grandmother, Rukmini, who had wanted to read and study, but girls in her time were not allowed to do so. She was married at a very young age and widowed in her teenage years. She had a very difficult time raising her son without any resources, but with what little she had, she dedicated herself to ensuring he received an education. Her foresight changed my family’s fortune and I believe that access to education can do the same for other families as well. 

My trip to Nepal was in May 2011 and by October (11th to be exact), we had established the Rukmini Foundation. In an odd coincidence, that very year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to mark October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child. If that is not a sign, I don’t know what is. By 2012, we worked with the local community in Nepal to identify ten girls to start the program with, and the rest is history. 

What’s been the highlight of your work with the Rukmini Foundation?

After having done this work for the last 13 years, there are countless highlights: from seeing all ten girls we started the program with graduating from high school, to seeing a former scholar come back to work as a mentor, to supporting the entire community recover from the earthquakes of 2015, to bringing a team of villagers to the US for an international robotics competition. They are all highlights for sure, but there have been a few “aha” moments where we realized the enormous impact our programs could have. The one that comes most readily to my mind is how impactful our nutrition program has been. This program, which we have rolled out to five schools and communities, began with just one school. This program is challenging to implement because of its costs, but also because it requires the participation of the entire school for it to be successful. However, after we implemented this program at one school, we started noticing that enrollment and attendance improved. Not only that, but the students started performing better in class. A program like this has so many positive outcomes that it is crazy to think that most schools do not provide a lunch program.

How is community engagement important in your work?

I don’t believe that Rukmini Foundation could have been a success without community engagement. From the start of our work in Nepal in 2011, we relied on our connections with local teachers, leaders, and government officials to make sure we were focused on the right challenges to solve and that we were supporting the girls who needed the most help. As we have grown and expanded the types of things we do, we continue to rely on input from the community to understand what new types of programming we should implement. For example, our expansion of the meal program to five schools was because we heard from more community leaders about how important this program was and how eager they were to also support it. Our advocacy work would not be possible and would not be nearly as successful if we did not engage the community. We have had several programs on important topics, such as child marriage and gender-based violence, and by including the community (through drama performances in public), we have made these difficult topics approachable and engaging.

Our community engagement helped to establish respect and trust, which was further strengthened when we stepped up to support our community during some unforeseen disasters like the 2015 earthquakes and issues like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another aspect of community engagement in Nepal that is very important is being able to work with local government agencies. We cannot do anything without their approval of our programs, so our team has worked hard to build a strong relationship with these agencies. We work with full transparency and are diligent about timely reporting, and this has been verified through annual audits by independent auditors. 

What are some goals you have for the future?

 We continue to learn and evolve, so we are always looking for new and innovative ways to empower girls through education. We want to push the boundaries of what quality education can mean, from providing extracurricular activities like sports to incorporating more STEM education, to teaching self-defense, and more. We want school to be a place that girls (and boys) not only have to attend but want to attend. We want them to take an active part in learning.

Furthermore,  we would like to be able to support our girls beyond just high school, but this will not only require additional funding but also more team capacity. This is something we are evaluating, but not quite ready to pilot. Regardless of what new thing we will look to do, we will be sure to engage with our key stakeholders, including the community. 

Is there a student supported by the Rukmini Foundation who stands out and whose story you'd like to share?

We have been so lucky to see so many girls succeed through our holistic program, and I can think of many girls who could fit this, but one girl (a young woman now) who stands out to me is Puja Pudasaini. She was one of the first ten girls in our program and one of the first graduates. After graduating, she started mentoring younger girls right after finishing high school. Besides mentoring others, she was involved in our program activities, such as conducting door-to-door surveys on child marriage and publicly advocating against child marriage. After she earned her Bachelor’s degree, she has been teaching in the local community where she is visible to everyone as a shining example for others to be inspired by. She is paying it forward through her role as a teacher, mentor, and role model.