Beyond the ‘Good Girl’ Narrative: Voice, Choice and Agency

Summaiya Afreen, Director at NGO Lakshya Jeevan Jagriti

Don’t just tell a girl to dream big. Also, give her wings: Summaiya Afreen on Working for Women and Girls’ Empowerment & Life Post TEDxPanaji 2025

“Over the years, I have understood that empowerment is not just about changing a girl’s mindset; it is about changing the conditions in which she makes decisions.”

This is the thought that drives Summaiya Afreen’s current journey of reshaping the narratives that scaffold how young girls grow up. 

We caught up with the educationist — Summaiya is currently the Director at NGO Lakshya Jeevan Jagriti — to understand how being a part of TEDxPanaji 2025: It’s About Time modelled her thought processes and work that she later undertook.  

In her talk, Summaiya had emphasised the importance of challenging the gender bias and why it’s integral to break the ‘good girl narrative’. One year on, she says, the attempt has remained unflinching. “The idea that girls are often rewarded for being good rather than being encouraged to be curious, courageous, or questioning still deeply resonates with me. We teach girls very early to be accommodating, to listen, adjust, compromise, and not make others uncomfortable. Sometimes, without realising it, we confuse obedience with goodness.”

That being said, Summaiya does have a new hack to approach this topic with. She shares, “Today, I would talk less about girls simply breaking these expectations and more about who has the responsibility to change them. We cannot keep asking girls to become stronger while leaving the systems and environments around them unchanged.”

Summaiya Afreen at TEDxPanaji 2025

The talk that sparked it all

Confidence was the takeaway for Summaiya following her TEDxPanaji talk. “It opened up conversations with people who had never thought about gender in these ways. But the biggest change was internal. I became more comfortable owning my voice and my experiences,” she reasons. 

That experience pointed her to the realisation that the stories she encountered through working in communities were not just personal. Instead, they could become a way of questioning larger social structures. “It also pushed me to think beyond individual interventions and ask how we can build institutions and programmes that consistently create agency for young people,” Summaiya shares. While acknowledging that she still believes ‘access’ is a fulcrum for development, she says she now understands that it alone cannot create agency. 

“A girl can be educated and still not be able to decide whether she wants to work. She can have skills and still not have control over her income. She can dream of becoming a leader and still be told that leadership is not appropriate for her. So today, I think about three things: voice, choice, and the power to act on that choice. That means creating spaces where girls can express themselves, helping them develop the confidence and skills to make decisions, and working with families, communities, and institutions so those decisions are actually possible.”

This is the modus operandi of Summaiya’s current work. 

Teacher Capacity Building Programme recently started in low-income schools in Haryana

A thin line between protecting and controlling

Challenging the notion that girls’ choices should be modelled around others’ comfort, Summaiya says the decisions made are often under the garb of the family wanting to protect a girl. 

But is it really that or just control masked as protection?  

Not wanting these questions to be confined to simple rhetoric, Summaiya started Lakshya Jeevan Jagriti in 2009 to make education and skills accessible to every child and youth. Elaborating on the model, she says, “Lakshya has evolved from doing programmes for young people to increasingly creating programmes with them. Our work has expanded across education, leadership, employability, and community engagement, working with girls, young women, teachers, community educators, and young leaders. Our work with teachers has also taught us that if we want to change children's experiences, we have to invest in the adults around them.”

‘Don’t just tell a girl to dream big. Also, give her wings.’

According to a Reuters poll, Indian women's participation in the workforce will take at least two decades to catch up with G20 peers. While bringing in a revolutionary change will take its time, NGOs across India are doing their bit to set the wheels in motion. 

To this end, Lakshya Jeevan Jagriti runs programmes designed to help children, youth and women from underserved communities build the confidence, skills and independence needed to shape their futures. Its flagship programmes, Eklavaya and Aao Saath Maa, use self-learning, reflection and experiential activities to encourage participants to understand their strengths, develop self-esteem and apply their learning in everyday life.

Eklavaya focuses on empowering young people through personal development, leadership, communication and life skills, helping them become more confident and better prepared for education and employment. Aao Saath Maa works with women and mothers, creating spaces for self-expression, reflection and personal growth while strengthening their ability to make decisions and become more self-reliant.

Over the years, the NGO has expanded its work to include vocational skilling for marginalised youth and leadership development programmes in collaboration with corporates. Partnerships with organisations such as Teach For India and Singapore International Education have further enriched its learning programmes with new perspectives and approaches.

Summaiya with students at their centre in Uttar Pradesh

What am I willing to do to create the life I want? 

Today, this is the question Summaiya asks herself. It’s her barometer of success. 

It’s something she developed over time, she explains, adding that it’s a lesson from her work. 

“It is relatively easy to tell a girl to dream big, but it is much harder to create the conditions that allow her to pursue that dream. A girl may say she wants to become a teacher, entrepreneur, or professional, but then there may be restrictions on mobility, pressure to marry, household responsibilities, financial constraints, lack of digital access, or simply no one in her family who believes her dream is realistic.”

Thus, she continues, “Empowerment cannot stop at motivation. Families need to see girls as decision-makers, communities need to create safer and more enabling environments, and institutions need to make education, employment, and leadership opportunities genuinely accessible.” 

Emphasising that girls themselves need not just inspiration, but skills, networks, information, financial understanding, and the confidence to negotiate, Summaiya says the question should not only be, ‘What does she dream of?’ It should also be, ‘What needs to change around her for that dream to become a choice?’