12-Year-Old Takes the Initiative to Run a School in her Village

At the age of 12, Bharti Kumari, is the head teacher at her school in Kusumbhara, an Indian village. Each morning and each evening after Bharti Kumari attends her school that is a 2-mile walk away from her home, she teaches the English and math learned during her school day to 50 village children who are not enrolled in school. The children at her school are between the ages of 4 and 10 years old, and they are among the 10 million Indian children that are not able to attend school because of poverty.

As an infant, Bharti Kumari was abandoned at a railway stations in Bihar, India. Her adoptive father, Rampati, encourages his daughter to continue her learning in school rather than continuing the rural tradition of pushing young girls into marrying.