When she first heard about Prerna, which means inspiration in English, Singh had one question: “Do they beat you?’’ That abuse had been part of her experience at a local village school, where teachers showed up sporadically. Singh never learned to take an exam and fell way behind. She is the eldest of five girls; her mother married at 16 and is illiterate. Her father drank and beat her mother and siblings so regularly that Singh’s mother once threatened to poison all her children and herself to end their misery.

Although she liked studying, Singh was discouraged from attending because it wasn’t considered safe. When her family moved to Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, they stayed in an abandoned room and moved to a local hospital at night, where they would search for empty beds. Everything changed when Singh got to Prerna. “I felt like I belonged … you can go to your teacher and talk to them about your personal problems. Discussing our lives was part of being in school,” she recounts in Reaching for the Sky.

Sahni, who also works closely with government schools on an advisory council, is often asked her opinion on improving education for girls in India. She’s convinced that having schools recognize the trauma and poverty inherent in their lives is a start, particularly in a country stratified by gender, religion, and a caste system that still permeates daily life.

“To change mindsets, you have to start at school,’’ Sahni said. “It’s not just about reading and writing and counting. It’s about developing a social and political consciousness. You want them to have a good life.”

With over 1.3 billion people, India is second only to China in population and will account for 25 percent of the world’s labor pool by 2030. Ashish Dhawan, a former investment manager who started the Central Square Foundation to boost education in India, has repeatedly insisted his country act “with a sense of urgency,’’ if it wants to become an economic superpower, and improve both the quality of its schools and teaching force.

Aashna Shroff, a 22-year-old Stanford graduate, feels that urgency. She grew up in Mumbai and was one of only two girls taking computer classes at her private high school, Chirec International. Her older sister, who studied computer science at MIT, sent her lectures and coding lessons. When Shroff arrived at Stanford, she found herself overwhelmed by opportunities she never had in India, and immediately wondered how she could help girls left behind in her country.

At government schools she visited back home, Shroff found “some might never have even seen a computer.’’ So she began working with other Stanford students and faculty to form a nonprofit Girls Code Camp, which aims to teach computer science to middle and high-school girls in India. The camps have already served about 800 girls; Aashna is now studying at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and hopes to develop low-cost education tools for countries like India.