What is the name of your organization?
MentHER: Her Path. Our Purpose.
What is the name of your solution?
MentHER
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Empowers girls 12–18 from low-income, marginalized communities to stay in school, build modern skills and gain financial independence and self-agency.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Our administrative leadership is based in Cambridge, MA, and we’re fully operational in India.
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
USA
What type of organization is your solution team?
Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
At 17, Shashi wasn’t worried about board exams—her next step, like many before her, was marriage. Girls made up 29% of her 12th‑grade class, and few would graduate and forge their own paths. By February, she was married off, and never saw beyond the life chosen for her. This isn’t an isolated story; This is the reality of 35M girls in India, 135M girls globally. And, intimately, it’s also the story of my mother.
The Ministry of Statistics in India reports that 57% of girls drop out of school once hitting puberty. MIT and Harvard Economists' research on the Bihar Bicycle Program revealed that even when schools were nearby, girls didn’t attend because they couldn’t see how education would help their future. These researchers found that the problem isn't access to education, the problem is incentive.
In rural areas of developing countries, the real challenge isn’t the shortage of resources: tools, libraries, or iPads, it’s the lack of rolemodels who demonstrate the visible benefits of education. Girls do not know why understand continuing their education can benefit their future, because they don't have local female rolemodels from their community that showcase that benefit.
What is your solution?
MentHER empowers girls aged 12–18 from low‑income, marginalized communities in the global south to stay in school while developing essential transferable skills: digital and financial literacy, leadership, confidence, domestic‑violence safety, and career readiness, creating a vital pathway to financial independence and self‑agency.
Our two‑fold mentorship model pairs each mentee with a female rolemodel: teacher or older peer from her community who has forged a successful career beyond her village. These mentors volunteer 1-2 hours twice a week after school, addressesing skills often absent from government school curriculum.
Paired with an AI‑powered mobile platform that bridges gaps between mentorship sessions by delivering curated lesson plans, progress tracking analytics, and adaptability to your native language. 1:1 mentorship alone isn’t sustainable, yes changing one student’s life matters, but so does millions in villages just like theirs. So a reliable mentorship model must blend (1:1 intereaction) with structured learning (mobile platform) to ensure impact at scale.
MentHER operates for-profit B2C model with a freemium plan offering core features and paid upgrades for premium tools, utilizing tiered licensing for NGOs, corporate partners, and schools, supplemented by grant funding from major donors.
By integrating community mentorship with AI‑enhanced learning.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
In many low‑income, marginalized communities, girls drop out by puberty, and research shows dropout rates spike by age 14 because families see secondary school as an unaffordable expense compared to their sons, and push daughters into early marriage or unpaid labor in family businesses. Without older women in their circles modeling what a skill-driven job can provide, these girls lack the vision and support to continue their education.
MentHER’s model delivers 1:1 mentorship, peer support networks, resource matching, personalized guidance, life‑skills training, all in local languages and low‑bandwidth formats. Internet access is a problem in India, yet 95% of households, including rural areas, own smartphones. The model also leverages safe established school environments for mentorship sessions, avoiding background verification needs or additional travel. Everything is built for the realities of these communities, so girls can learn anytime, anywhere, even offline.
By helping girls stay in school past 14 and preparing them to enter the job market, MentHER unlocks real economic opportunity: they gain the skills to earn an income, boost household finances, and contribute to their country’s growth. As these young women build self‑agency and leadership, they ignite generational change, pulling them out of the poverty cycle.