The Blossom Bus: Help Rural Girls Get To School!

BLOSSOM BUS EXPANDING - OUR UPDATE REPORT

Great News Update! 

We are very excited to have received permission from local school authorities to begin providing the Blossom Bus riders AND the entire population of the schools Lotus Outreach serves with quarterly educational campaigns. The programs we will offer are Career Counselling, Child-Safe awareness (good touch, bad touch knowledge and boundaries), Children's Rights, and Women's Health! Lotus Outreach is very excited to be able to offer these programs.

We're also increasing the number of young women riders on Blossom Bus’s from villages in Haryana in April 2024 from 250 to 350!! With crucial funding from donors like yourself, we've been able to include another girls' senior secondary school in our bus program. This means Blossom Bus will be serving 100 more girls and families from remote villages on the extreme edges of the state of Haryana, bordering Uttar Pradesh! Growth of this program means the lives of 100 girls will be transformed through the power of safe access to education.

Why Blossom Bus Exists

Girls in India continue to face significant roadblocks in terms of equal access to education, including lack of water and hygiene infrastructure at schools, household duties, high incidents of child-marriage, and safety issues while traveling to school including kidnapping and human trafficking. A report by NCPCR suggests that 39.4% of girls between 15-18 years of age are out of school and 57% of girls drop-out before reaching the 11th grade. 27% of girls in India are married before the age of 18. 

Distance to school acts as a significant roadblock. With all this in mind, Blossom Bus seeks to support ease of access to education for young women living in rural India who live far from the nearest school and often are forced to drop out due to safety concerns in traveling these distances. 

The Blossom Bus program was initiated in 2010 by Lotus Outreach in recognition of these systemic challenges and lack of access to safe and affordable transport to schools for village girls in Haryana and Rajasthan. In 200, just before we began providing the Blossom Bus services in Haryana, only one girl from a minority community had reached grade 9 out of 100 government school students. 

Without bus services, girls drop out from grade 8 in staggering numbers due to the distance from their villages to school. Over the past 14 years, Blossom Bus has carried more than 1500 individual students.

INCREASED AGENCY IN GIRLS AND WOMEN -- EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS OF BLOSSOM BUS

Increased numbers of girls attending high school has many educational and social impacts: 

• Schools with large numbers of girls in classes 9 through 12 receive increased government funds to improve educational facilities including science and computer labs crucial to preparing young women for careers in STEM and for which women are currently highly underrepresented. 

• When girls stay in school, their siblings and friends are more likely to remain in school and raise their ambitions with respect to completion of high school, post-secondary education, and the pursuit of career pathways. There is a direct positive community-based “cause-and-effect” outcome when girls are given the resources to support their education.

• Traditional and tribal communities who see the benefits of girls' education to themselves and future generations begin to support education for girls and avoid early marriage. Child marriage has been a social norm in these areas up until recently, however, that is changing with the implementation of programs that increase girl's attendance of school.

MENTORS

In the past two years, Lotus Outreach has initiated the addition of female mentors hired to accompany girls on the Blossom Buses. Mentors come from the same villages as the Blossom Bus riders, are all Blossom Bus alumni, and are either currently attending higher education or are graduates. Mentors take daily attendance, provide riders with emotional support, and act as encouragement and inspiration to Blossom Bus riders to remain in school and pursue their dreams. Having a role model with similar lived experience provides the Blossom Bus riders with a clear picture of how they can take the reigns of their lives and create a brighter future for themselves and their communities.

BLOSSOM BUS RIDER: POOJA’S STORY

POOJA now dares to dream of a bright future in the medical field due to access to higher education, STEM (science) subjects, and mentorship. 

Pooja, Grade 12, lives in a remote village in Haryana and has been riding Blossom Bus to the nearest girls’ high school for the past four years.  She passionately wants to become a nurse and is studying hard to achieve her goal. Far fewer girls than boys study STEM subjects in India, so Pooja is a great example of increased girl’s agency through access to higher education and to STEM subjects in particular. 

Pooja tells us in her own words:

“I am very happy that I will be able to continue my studies, and can become a Nurse after completing my education thanks to Blossom Bus services. In our area, we don’t have proper transportation, and because of that, dropout rates are high.”

 “It [would] be very hard for girls like me to continue their studies if bus services aren’t here.  I am grateful for this beautiful program, as this bus service helped not only me but also many girls in my village. In my community, girls can’t go out without a parent [or chaperone] with them while boys can go anywhere.”

“In our bus, a mentor Didi (Sister) is coming with us. She is responsible for taking attendance on our bus, [and] while returning from school she sings with us. I love to chat with her, [and] she always asks how my day at school was. She guides me a lot, not only in my studies, but she has also helped me a lot in my personal life. 

She comes to my home to talk with my parents sometimes, and checks in with me and my parents if I miss school for more than two days. After learning that I want to be a nurse, she suggested [to] me some good institutions near our village where I can complete my GNM course. She also gave me [an] example of Nisha–a girl who completed her GNM course [in] my village–which motivated me a lot. 

I think girls can be independent if they are being educated!

Didi helps everyone on our bus, [and] she motivates everyone to complete their education. I can say Didi is one of my guides who told me what path I need to choose to achieve my goal. I want every girl in my community to know about their rights. In my point [of view], girls are the same as boys, just girls need opportunity. ”

GOING FORWARD:

Thanks to the generous support of donors like you, Blossom Bus is able to provide invaluable opportunities to girls who would otherwise be unable to access education safely. Through our programs, Lotus Outreach is able to completely transform the lives of the girls we serve. Thank you for supporting and believing in girls like Pooja.