Press Release

CorStone Receives Grant from Fondation CHANEL to expand Girls First | KGBV Resilience Program

Bihar | India
June 5, 2018

CorStone, developers of an evidence-based resilience training program that measurably improves empowerment outcomes of women and youth, announced a new partnership with Fondation CHANEL. This partnership will help expand CorStone’s Girls First resilience training program in Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya | KGBV residential schools in Bihar, India.

Fondation CHANEL works to improve the economic and social conditions for women and adolescent girls around the world by supporting projects that demonstrate tangible, sustainable results. Girls First | KGBV has previously been conducted in 103 of Bihar’s KGBV’s serving approximately 11,000 girls, improving their emotional and physical wellbeing and empowering them to delay early marriage and pursue their education. This grant builds on support from NoVo Foundation for the Girls First | KGBV program announced last month.

In 2004, the Government of India established the national network of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya | KGBV residential schools to help address gender and caste disparities in education. KGBV schools serve at-risk girls from ‘low’ castes, minorities, tribal communities, and/or from families below the poverty line. In these communities, girls typically are required by their parents to stay at home and help their families with household chores until age 13-14 years, at which point they are often married. As such, many of the girls who attend KGBVs have either dropped out of school during the primary grades or have never gone to school.

CorStone’s Girls First | KGBV program empowers adolescent girls attending KGBV residential schools to unleash their potential and thrive. The resilience-based program aims to measurably impact three interdependent factors in girls’ wellbeing: emotional health, physical health, and education.
“Fondation CHANEL has done tremendous work improving the conditions for adolescent girls across the globe”, said Steve Leventhal, Executive Director, Corstone. “This new partnership expands CorStone’s resilience training in KGBV schools, which is an essential tool to help disadvantaged girls bounce back to improve their social and economic conditions.”



About CorStone
CorStone empowers marginalized youth and young women to redefine their futures, even when faced with the most difficult circumstances and the most limited opportunities. CorStone resilience training teaches the skills that empower youth to thrive—not just survive—despite significant adversity. Rigorous, well-documented studies show the powerful impact the organization's approaches are having on youth around the world.

About Fondation CHANEL
Fondation CHANEL works to improve the economic and social conditions of women and adolescent girls across the globe. To sustain its commitment to women, Fondation CHANEL supports knowledge generation for the philanthropic sector through operational research, program evaluation and case studies.

About KGBV Schools
Today, there are more than 3500 KGBVs serving over 300,000 girls in 27 states across India. There are 529 KGBVs in Bihar, annually serving approximately 47,000 girls in grades 6-8. To ensure that the girls continue their elementary-level education uninterrupted, all KGBV schools are residential in nature. Girls receive extensive training in topics such as character strengths, interpersonal communication, problem-solving, nutrition, reproductive health, and gender-based violence—all taught in facilitated peer support groups led by trained KGBV teachers.