Meet the Changemaker

Magic Bus steers children towards a better life with better awareness, better life skills, and better opportunities, in the journey from childhood to livelihood. Magic Bus is driving change in 320 of India's poorest villages and slum settlements

Impact Area: Education
Participation in the Magic Bus program makes a child attend more regularly at school, reducing his/her chances of dropping out and increasing the possibility of the child moving into higher grades.

• 95.7% of the children in our program have an attendance record of over 80%. (Study 2)
• 98% of the adolescent girls at Magic Bus are in secondary school. (Study 2)

Impact Area: Gender
By the time a Magic Bus child finishes her or his first year in our programme, she or he is more aware of issues relating to gender-equity and rights, and is therefore better equipped to behave fairly with people of any gender.

• 42% of the participants in our programme are girls. (National MIS)
• 82% of children feel that sports are as important for boys as for girls. (Study 2)
• 82.7% children believe that it is equally important to invest in a girl’s as well as a boy’s future. (Study 2)

Impact Area: Sexual and Reproductive Health
Young women and girls in Magic Bus report a higher degree of control over their sexual and reproductive health.

• 82.66% of the girls know about and practice menstrual hygiene – washing their pads and drying them in sunlight, changing their pads regularly and maintaining genital hygiene to prevent yeast infections. (Study 1)
• 77.78% Magic Bus children are aware about their bodies and can differentiate between good and bad touch. (Study 1)
• By the age of 12, 80% of children are aware of the permissible legal age for marriage. Under current Indian laws, the legal age for marriage is 18 for girls and 21 for boys. (Study 1)

Meet the Leader

Formerly Chief Operating Officer of Cox and Kings and Founder of Cleartrip.com, Matthew comes with extensive experience in senior positions within the corporate sector and an intuitive understanding of the needs of the development sector.In 2007, he was awarded an MBE for services to children in the Commonwealth.

---

Making news

• Matthew Spacie talks to Economic times, August 2013
• Magic Bus gets recognized at Laureus Awards. The Times of India; March, 2014

---

Stories of Change

Most of Annawadi’s residents work as daily wage workers across Mumbai with meager incomes. Awareness about preventive health and formal education is low in this area. Children and adolescents are willing to go only till 7th or 8th grades in schools, after which there is tremendous pressure to start earning

REad about Magic Bus's impact