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Mahila Vikas aims to promote the education of girl children in the tribal areas of Gajapati district, Orissa. These areas don't have many functional schools within accessible distances. In order to address this, and impress upon parents the need for educating girl children - Mahila Vikas organizes bridge schools in various villages. Each village has one bridge school where primary education is imparted for young girls. The project also aims to address various health and other societal issues in the community.

Their mission and goals are to:
1. Provide education and healthcare to tribal girls and empower female population.
2. Provide primary education to girl children of ages 5-12 years from class 1 through class 3.
3. Run 15 bridge course centers in 5 panchayats to enroll dropout and non-school going children in govt schools.

The project also tries to engage the community to take part in village governance. Unemployment is a major issue in the area and Mahila Vikas has worked towards encouraging village folk to apply for jobs through NREGA. They have educated locals about various Government initiatives like RTI as well.

The villages which Mahila Vikas works in are quite remote and spread out. They are in a 4-6 hour radius from the district headquarters (Parlakhemundi). Among its schools, education volunteers (or teachers) are Mahila Vikas's representatives in each village. The project follows a meticulous teaching plan. Teachers from these 15 villages meet every month in the district headquarters and discuss monthly lesson plans, and presentations are made about teaching methods. They maintain a rotation based library system as well, where children are loaned books for a month and asked to circulate among their peers. The project organizes an annual day called 'Balmela' which is a cultural and sports meet for all the schools. They also take children on Exposure tours to museums, universities, zoos and parks in nearby major cities.

During the course of the bridge school, Mahila Vikas encourages the parents to enroll their children in nearby functional schools. Their aim is to mainstream as many children as possible and encourage them to continue in formal schools without dropping out. Over the past 4 years close to 900 children have passed through Mahila Vikas's bridge schools and close to 60% of them were mainstreamed.

Mahila Vikas has been having a significant impact in an area thats quite backward. Site visit reports have indicated that the project is in very good standing and the locals hold Mahila Vikas in high regard.

Illiteracy is quite high in the region and many school going children are first generation school-goers. As is prevalent, parents don't encourage their girl children to continue in schools for a long time. Poverty is also an attributing factor for this. Educated folks are very few in number. Those who do manage to get to a high schooling age, have to move to the district headquarters to attend schools. In fact, Mahila Vikas is not able to expand because of the lack of qualified teachers (even 10th-12th pass) for their bridge schools.

This project is situated in a very remote location and its hard to access via roads. There are very few government institutions like functional schools, or hospitals, or administration in the area. Maoist insurgence is also a cause of concern in the area.

The tribes of the area have very few employment opportunities and try to subsist with forest produce. Since its a hilly region, roads get spoilt during the rains and catchment of clean drinking water is also an issue. That in itself gives rise to various health issues.

One of Mahila Vikas's education volunteers who was working in the Khilliganda village succeeded in mobilising the funds for construction of the school building. He took the photographs of the broken school building and along with the Village Education Committee went to the Block Development Officer, Rayagada block. They showed the BDO the present status of the school building and asked to take immediate action, else they would give those photos to the press. The BDO instructed the Assistant Engineer (AE) of the Block on the spot to release funds from the block grant for construction of the school building. He also instructed to take immediate action on the school teacher responsible for the case. The AE provided them the application formats and also requested them to bring the signed resolution of the villagers for official records.

After two days of this incident the village school teacher, who occasionally comes to the school came and requested the villagers to help him. He renovated the thatched roof of the school and assured the villagers to come regularly. During one of the later staff meetings, the EV (teacher) presented this success story and showed the photographs of the school building taken before and after renovation. He also mentioned that the villagers gave the Palli Sabha resolution along with the filled in application in the prescribed format to the BDO, and the A. E. has assured to release the work order for construction of the school building in their village soon.

The project initially started to improve the tribal communities in the area. They adopted the task of educating the girl children as a first step. Over the years, they have grown to cover 20 villages with bridge education centers. They have worked to motivate the village members to participare in the governance structure and to utilise Government initiatives like MGNREGA and RTI. Use of NREGA is critical in this area as there is rampant poverty and unemployment and the usual sops that the Governments promise the tribals dont really trickle down.

Mahila Vikas has also worked with various NGOs wherever appropriate. They organize health camps for the remote villages periodically. Reproductive Child Health Programme was started and they carried out Tribal Swasthya Melas with the support from National Rural Health Mission, under Department of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of Orissa, in the under served areas of R.Udayagiri block. They have worked towards providing clean drinking water as well, which is a big issue in the area. They continued to mainstream over 900 children into nearby functional schools and residential schools out of which more than 60% continue to study now. They encourage and coax dropouts to get back to school.

The project aims to sensitize parents about the importance of educating their daughters. The want to motivate the parents so that parents willingly keep the girl child in school. The project aims to provide a non-formal start to primary education for the girl children and them mainstream them into nearby functional and sometimes residential schools. They want to make sure all girl children in the tribal region have sufficient access to functional schools and stay in school without dropping out.

At the same time, the project's long term vision is to work towards the upliftment of the tribal communities.