Free bicycles help keep Indian girls in school

ALL content used in this not-for-profit blog remain the property of their respective owners.
http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120521-0000118/Free-bicycles-help-keep-Indian-girls-in-school

The daily trip to high school was expensive, long and eventually, too much for Indian teenager Nahid Farzana, who decided she was going to drop out. Then, the state government gave her a bicycle.

Two years later, she is about to graduate from high school and wants to be a teacher.

The program was an instant success, with the number of girls registered in the ninth grade in Bihar's state schools more than tripling in four years, from 175,000 to 600,000.

"The results are remarkable. The school dropout rate for girls has plunged," says Ms Anjani Kumar Singh, Bihar's principal secretary overseeing education.

The eastern state of Bihar has been so successful at keeping teenage girls in school, the bike giveaways have spread to neighbouring states. Now the Indian government wants to expand it across the country in hopes it might help improve female literacy.