With this amazing list of criteria for who is a Girl Star, nine women from Going to School traveled across five northern states in India where girls are most at risk from dropping out of school—Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand & Rajasthan—for nine months, in search of Girl Stars. And against great odds, we found 15, and this is their story.
15 Girl Stars movies were aired on Doordarshan nationally and regionally, repeatedly for over a year in eight languages. Girl Stars has been seen by 750 million people! Girl Stars was screened on National Geographic and continues to be replayed to this day.
Stories of Anita the Beekeeper, Kiran the Junkyard Dealer, Suryamani the Forest Activist, were incorporated in NCERT textbooks, reaching over 10 million children in Government Primary Schools. 200,000 Girl Stars books have been sent to government schools. A Girl Stars calendar was printed by SSA for every Government school in five states.
