4 We strongly believe that this kind of a ‘comprehensive’ leadership training model can present some answers to the problems that minority women face. Not only is capacity building and leadership training for minority women an empowering end in itself, it is also a vital means to another end. Because even as the State seeks to make social and physical infrastructure, civic amenities, and schools available in Minority neighborhoods, there is a critical need for ‘push and pull factors’ to work in tandem. In other words, the Minority community will also have to reach out to systems of local governance to make the system responsive. This pilot scheme for leadership development of minority women aims to place minority women in the vanguard of this ‘pull factor’. For experiences of organizing women all over the globe, to which so many women in this very room can bear testimony, tell us that given the right support and inputs women can and will make the system respond. III. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SCHOOL-BASED EDUCATION FOR MINORITY GIRLS A. Education for Minority Girls: Why do we aim so low? In making recommendations for minority girls, there is always an emphasis on elementary education. This is valid for there is an acute problem of basic education. Yet, it also means that we appear to stop dreaming the big dream for them. This reflects in our activism and our policies. When we ask States to ensure schooling for minority girls, we must also with equal vigour and passion ask them to ensure professional education, technical education and higher educational opportunities for minority girls, Muslim and Dalit. We need to think beyond the basic welfare approach to education, and create for minority girls a global public environment that legitimizes aspiration - towards true excellence and the highest possible intellectual endeavors. For this is how role models can be born, and minority women’s leadership created. B. Anti-Discrimination Legislation to cover Education Finally, we need to speak not just about access to schooling, but right to an education that is dignified and empowering; that does not harm the child’s sense of self or dignity; that questions and critiques; that which gives outcomes of both expanded minds and expanded job opportunities. In each of these arenas, education systems the world over are plagued by discrimination against minorities. I would suggest for the future an entire session of this Forum dedicated to unearthing, documenting and suggesting ways to end the multiple forms of anti-minority discrimination that afflict our education systems – in funding, in location, in teacher recruitment, in quality, in curriculum, in classroom practices, and in outcomes. We have heard the word ‘Discrimination” many times, in all the statements by previous speakers this morning. But we cannot begin to end this without strong legal instruments. I believe there can be