There are 1.1 billion girls in the world, and each one of them deserves equal opportunities in their lives. India alone has 120 million adolescent girls, accounting for nearly 10% of its population. Despite their numbers, girls in India are a largely invisible population.
Yet, young girls today are source of energy, power and creativity. Based on the belief that intergenerational patterns of poverty, violence, abuse and discrimination can be broken in a single generation, here are some organizations who are investing in adolescent girls across the world, working to bring focus to issues of skewed sex ratio, female foeticide, child marriage, unequal and abusive treatment, young girls caught in conflicts, and gender disparities, promoting girl’s empowerment and fulfilment of their human rights and aspiring to create agents of multi-generational change.
Don’t miss these inspiring girlhood campaigns making their presence across the world.
1. GIRL EFFECT
Girl Effect is a creative non-profit – experts in media, mobile, brand and international development – working where girls are marginalised and vulnerable. They build youth brands and mobile platforms that millions of girls and boys love and interact with. From apps that build skills, to TV dramas that explore vital issues, to magazines written and distributed by girls.
Girl effect uses media and mobile tech, namely girls connect, springster, to empower girls to change their lives, in formats and ways in which girls love to interact.
“I’m not like OTHER girls” – a phrase too familiar to most young women trying to be individual. Too many of us try to achieve individuality by distancing ourselves from our gender but who decides what girls are like? And who decides that they’re all the same?
I Am Like Other Girls is an Instagram based project that strives to redefine what it means to be like other girls. Started in 2017 by Ellie Lee and Tara Anand who discovered that they shared a sense of loathing towards statements like “You’re not like other girls” or “I’m not like other girls.” Statements like these thrown around so casually and doing so much damage to one’s perception of girls and femininity, their aspiration was to disassemble the negativity associated with femininity and make it clear that femininity is whatever one wants it to be.
I am like other girls is project that addresses a multitude of perspective and voices on girlhood, encouraging girls from different backgrounds to participate and share their illustrated stories.
Around the world, girls continue to face unique barriers that violate their rights and keep them from achieving their full potential. Discrimination against girls leads to grave injustices like gender-based violence, being forced to drop out of school, child marriage and early pregnancy. Because I Am a Girl is an international movement by Plan International that aims to address this discrimination, and promotes the rights of girls, bringing millions of girls out of poverty around the world.
Because I am a Girl focuses on giving girls equal opportunities, whether that means changing laws, improving education, improving sexual health services or providing support by creating pathways for them to become leaders and make change happen. They work with all community members and leaders, including men and boys, to help girls learn, lead, decide and thrive – empowering girls to achieve gender equality.
4. GIRL UP
Started by the United Nations Foundation, Girl Up started with the belief that girls are powerful. Girls have limitless potential. Girls can change the world. And yet in certain places around the world, girls continue to lack access to opportunities.
Girl Up is a global movement of empowered young women leaders who defend gender equality. Through leadership development training, Girl Up gives girls the resources and platform to start a movement for social change wherever they are. Working with the belief that no matter their background, girls have the power to transform themselves, their communities, and the world around them, this initiative has brought together Champions and Global Advocates that represent a diverse group of individuals – celebrities, athletes, business executives, philanthropists – who actively work to empower adolescent girls around the globe.
Girl rising is driven by the mission to ensure that girls around the world are educated and empowered. This campaign works with partners to change attitudes and behaviors, and spark community-led initiatives, together, advancing towards a future where every girl has the opportunity to go to school, stay in school, and reach her full potential.
In 2017, Girl rising launched a 24-week gender sensitization curriculum designed to reach 50,000 students and 1,700 teachers in India. The curriculum empowers participants to address local norms, question stereotypes and drive change within their school environments, families and in their communities.
Girl rising uses a host of tools to engage and change deep rooted mindsets that hold girls back in communities across the world. They primarily use Storytelling as a catalyst for impact and long-term social change, told through film, television, social media videos, graphic novels, radio, curricula and more.
The advent of this campaign traces back to Heart, Afghanistan where visual journalist Stephanie Sinclair was working on a story about girls and women who set themselves on fire. There, she discovered a disturbing pattern amongst the scarred patients in the hospital’s burn ward: Most of them had been forced into marriage as children. A common practice across communities throughout the world, Sinclair started too young to wed, a transmedia campaign aimed at raising awareness of the problem, supporting girls who were already married and ultimately halting the practice that affects one girl every two seconds.
This campaign’s traveling photo exhibit is the crux of their advocacy efforts, featuring haunting stories of child brides across Nepal, India, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and the United States. Besides partnering with potent organizations on the issue of child marriage, this campaign also provides on-ground support to girls in their communities.
