19/08/2026
A girl's life is shaped by decisions she has no part in making.
At KHPT, we are working to change that. Through our Girls in Governance initiative, we support adolescent girl leaders to engage meaningfully with local governance across Karnataka, to identify the issues that affect their lives, speak up about them, and create a system that is willing to listen, respond and make space for their participation.
Today, that work reaches 300 Gram Panchayats, in partnership with the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) Department, Government of Karnataka. Our ambition is to take this to 60,000 adolescent girl leaders across the state.
A recent Samvada (dialogue) in Chikkamagaluru brought this vision to life, bringing together Ms. H.S Keerthana, IAS, CEO, Zilla Panchayat, Chikkamagaluru, and Mr. Mohan HL, CEO, KHPT, along with senior district government officials and our Adolescent Health teams.
Ms. Keerthana spoke about her own journey and why she believes strongly in girls' participation in governance. She also highlighted the importance of government working closely with civil society organisations to bring such ideas to life.
Mr. Mohan spoke about KHPT's long journey of working with government systems and why sustainable change cannot happen without government ownership and partnership.
Two leaders, two different vantage points, arriving at the same conclusion.
π For the adolescent girls we work with, this means moving beyond being beneficiaries of programmes to becoming active citizens with a voice in decisions that affect their lives.
π For the government system, it means creating institutional spaces where that voice can be heard and acted upon.
π And for civil society, it means working with the system, not alongside it, to strengthen the way systems respond to communities.
We are still early. But the ownership we are seeing build at the district level, especially the RDPR Department's growing commitment to creating space for girls and women within Gram Panchayats, gives us real confidence.
The road ahead is ambitious: from 300 Gram Panchayats today to over 6,000 across Karnataka.
Because when girls have a voice in the decisions that shape their lives, local governance becomes more inclusive, more responsive and more accountable. And girls stop being just beneficiaries of development. They become partners in shaping it.
