Pune: Empowering Girls Through Education: BNP Paribas Grants Funds For Avasara’s Residential Hall

Lavale, 12th April 2023: Avasara Academy, dedicated to empowering girls through education, inaugurated a hostel facility today (April 12), which will be operational for its students. This hostel, funded by BNP Paribas, aims to increase access to education for underprivileged girls and helps to create a safe, inclusive, and empowering learning environment for them.

Avasara Academy is a secondary school that started in August 2015. The school believes that a student’s ability to pay fees should not affect their chances to experience this unique and holistic educational opportunity. Avasara Academy is a residential school that provides food, sports education, and development programs for the girl students. It supports them with their application process for undergraduate studies at reputed universities in India and overseas.

BNP Paribas, through CSR grants, ensures that girls with economically disadvantaged backgrounds are educated through the IGCSE curriculum. Through its partnership with Avasara Academy, BNP Paribas is attempting to provide a quantum step change for these girl students in a global world by providing holistic education and enabling the girl students to become women who can assert their rights as equal members of society and yet challenge established gender norms in their social contexts. The girls come from families where their parents work in the informal sector and are at the poverty line.

One of the aims of Avsara is to provide education to underprivileged girls and make them better versions of themselves for the coming future. The academy provides education from class 6 to class 12. After the 12th, students choose their streams based on their interests and the academy helps them by providing scholarships for internships and universities.

Roopa Purushothaman, Founder of Avasara Academy, stated that when girls come to the academy, it is the academic’s responsibility to make them comfortable with the language of the curriculum, as it is a barrier at the start. “We provide them with tutors according to their needs. We have designed some activities which boost their confidence.”

She further informed, “In Avasara, there is freedom for everything. We have designed our buildings in such a way that there is ample space for the students to do different activities keeping in mind that they mostly do not get this space at their homes. Students feel free physically, mentally, emotionally and they have freedom of speech.”

In Avasara, students have practical-based courses as well as leadership and entrepreneurship courses. There are counselling sessions also designed for adolescent girls. “We aim to provide them with better access to practical learning along with extracurricular activities,” she added.