Celebrating Girls on International Day of the Girl and All Year Long

Yesterday was International Day of the Girl. This year’s theme, “My Voice, Our Equal Future,” focused on  “the opportunity to be inspired by what adolescent girls see as the change they want, the solutions—big and small—they are leading and demanding across the globe.”

We work to honor and uplift women every day, but we also passionately support girls and are inspired by their work, ideas, and the powerful women they’re growing into. That’s why—even though it’s the day after International Day of the Girl—we’re taking today to recognize, support, and empower (not to mention honor the power of) girls, and we’re calling for everyone to do so all year long. We’re looking at issues that threaten and challenge girls, deeper conversations and the continuing dialogue about advocacy for girls, resources to help, and year-round inspiration from amazing girls around the world.

How You Can Celebrate International Day of the Girl and Raise a Leader, from Forbes—“After almost twenty years of doing this work, I want us to stop teaching our girls the importance of being pretty, polite, and likable. I wonder what preschools and elementary schools would look like if our girls with the pressure to be brave, funny, and smart.”

Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai in Conversation for International Day of the Girl, from Teen Vogue—“Joining the indomitable pair is Priya Mondol, a 17-year-old student in Kolkata, India, for whom their work is personal. Priya faced obstacles to getting an education, but with the help of Her Future Coalition, an organization supported by the Girls Opportunity Alliance, she's able to keep learning during this challenging time. She joined Mrs. Obama and Malala to discuss the importance of developing resilience and to share insights about girls’ education and empowerment in advance of the Day of the Girl.”

How Shouting, Finger-Waving Girls Became Our Conscience, from The New York Times—“While aggression in women remains suspect, the public is drawn, now more than ever, to girls who reproach and rebuke, calling the world to account for its ills — and girls in turn are learning to harness that public gaze to effect larger change.”

International Day of the Girl Child, from the World Health Organization—“The 2020 theme of International Day of the Girl is “My voice, our equal future.” This is a striking call to recognize girls’ inheritance of the still-unfinished Beijing Agenda, their expertise on the challenges they face especially for their sexual and reproductive health and rights, and their limitless capacity as change-makers. To commemorate the day, WHO co-organized a virtual intergenerational dialogue between girl advocates and high-level leaders about putting girls and their rights at the centre of decision-making processes.”

How You Can Help on International Day of the Girl, from Refinery29—“Worldwide, nearly 1 in 4 girls aged 15–19 years is neither employed nor in education or training. And by 2021, nearly 435 million women and girls will be living on less than $1.90 a day—including 47 million pushed into poverty as a result of COVID-19, also according to the UN. In addition to those startling numbers, 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence. And since the pandemic began, violence against women and girls has become even more intense. [...] There are plenty of community-based initiatives working to solve these issues and more for girls.”

UN News - PHOTO FEATURE: International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation

un.org - Fatima, 7, sits on a bed in her home in Afar region, Ethiopia. She was subjected to FGM/C when she was 1 year old. Photo: UNICEF/ Holt 6 February 2017 – While the exact number is unknown, at least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia have been subjected to female genital mutilation, or FGM, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The World Health Organization (WHO) calls FGM a procedure that intentionally alters or causes injury to female genital organs for non-medical reasons. In lay terms, babies, girls and women are cut and their genitalia severed. WHO underscores that it not only provides no health benefits, but may lead to a life-time of obstacles. Furthermore, the majority of females who have been subjected to the practice are between infancy and age 15.

A young woman in an Ouagadougou clinic in Burkina Faso has undergone reconstructive surgery to repair the damage caused by female genital mutilation at age 6. Photo: UNICEF/ Nesbitt

WIDER IMAGE-Afghan girls fight prejudice with martial arts

news.trust.org - Girls of the Shaolin Wushu club face regular harassment and abuse in addition to the normal dangers of life in Kabul KABUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - On a snowy mountaintop to the west of Kabul, a group of Afghan girls practise the flowing movements of Wushu, a sport developed from ancient Chinese kung fu martial arts, stretching and bending and slashing the air with bright swords.

In a country where women's sport is severely restricted, the Shaolin Wushu club in a part of Kabul that is home to the capital's Hazara ethnic community, is a rare exception.

Sima Azimi, the 20-year-old leading the practice session, says Wushu teaches self-defence, but just as important, "it's really effective for body and soul".

She learned the sport in Iran, where she won a gold and bronze medal in competition, and she has been teaching in Kabul for about a year, encouraged by her father, with whom she trains at the club's gym.

"I am working with Afghan girls to strengthen their abilities and I love to see Afghan girls improve the way other girls have improved in the world," she said.

Release of Chibok Girls Rekindles Pressure to Free Last 196

While 21 girls were released and another was just rescued, 196 girls still remain missing after Boko Haram kidnapped them from their Chibok village in April 2014. The latest rescue has prompted increased pressure for the Nigerian government and President Muhammadu Buhari to work to secure the release of the remaining Chibok girls. Read below and click through for the full story from IPS News.

ipsnews.net - The Nigerian military announced the rescue of a missing Chibok schoolgirl Saturday, bringing to 23 the number freed since Boko Haram seized 219 girls from a secondary school in the country’s northeast in April 2014.

The latest rescue came about a month after the Islamist group released 21 girls in a deal with the government. Earlier in May, Amina Ali became the first amongst the missing girls to be rescued.

The releases riveted people around the world, and the government has flaunted them as political coups. But they have also rekindled demands from activists campaigning for greater government action for the release of nearly 200 girls still in captivity.

“It’s day 933 of abduction; 197 girls (are) still in captivity under your watch Mr. President @MBuhari. Time to bring them home,” Maureen Kabrik, a member of the BringBackOurGirls group, tweeted to President Muhammadu Buhari days after 21 of the girls were released early October.

The BringBackOurGirls group, set up to publicise the plight of the girls amidst international outrage in 2014, announced it would release on November 14 a report of a six-week monitoring of the government’s effort to rescue the girls.

Read more

‘I Was Going to Starve’: A Story of Trafficking and Escape in Kuwait

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Sally Nyakanyanga

A recent case has shed light on the number of young women being trafficked from Zimbabwe to Kuwait. One woman tells of how, desperate for work, she ended up being sold to a family and trapped in a cycle of exploitation and abuse.

After finishing her secondary education, Hazvinei Garanowako had tried to find a job but with no luck. Instead, she found herself looking for menial tasks to make some money. Then a friend’s mother told Garanowako, now 24, that she could get her a job in Kuwait, with the visa costs and airfare paid for. “It was a relief to hear that the lowest I could be paid was $750 working in a hotel,” says Garanowako.

She left for Kuwait with dreams of finally moving out of the cramped one-room home she shared with her parents and two other siblings. But her hopes were short lived. When Garanowako arrived at the airport in Kuwait, she and some other African women were instructed to wait in a separate line at passport control. Then they were taken to a storeroom where they waited for more than 10 hours, she says. Eventually, a woman came and took Garanowako to a car waiting outside the airport.

“I was told harshly to get in as the woman exchanged money and my travel documents with an Arab man,” she says. She was taken to the man’s house and put to work as a housemaid, along with seven other women from the Philippines, Ghana and India. They worked 23 hours a day, serving the family and cleaning the 15-room house. Garanowako says if she stopped to take a break, the wife would beat her. She was forced to survive on leftovers that she secretly ate in the bathroom. “I had to lie to [the family] that I needed to take a bath so they would switch off the camera in the bathroom for me to eat,” Garanowako says. “If I didn’t do that, I was going to starve.”

A month into her ordeal, Garanowako managed to find a cellphone to call her mother, Evas Mututa. Mututa gave her daughter the address of the Zimbabwean embassy in Kuwait, but to get there, Garanowako first had to steal some clothes to disguise herself as a local. “Luckily, I found a taxi and managed to reach our embassy, which later helped me come back home,” she says.

The plight of young Zimbabwe women trafficked into servitude in Kuwait came to light recently, when Zimbabwe’s ambassador wrote a letter pleading with the government to tackle the issue.

Grey Marongwe, the Zimbabwean ambassador to Kuwait, wrote to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May, saying that the embassy was getting around 10 calls a day from Zimbabwean maids asking for help to escape their employees. “The maids issue has escalated to unprecedented levels,” said the letter. “From the 15 maids we reported in our first letter [dated October 2015], numbers have swelled to more than a hundred.”

According to Marongwe, unsuspecting job seekers are promised high salaries, free air tickets and free accommodation, only to realize on arrival in Kuwait that they have been sold into servitude. The maids have their passports confiscated and are forced to stay with their employers for at least two years.

After lobbying efforts from the embassy and various civil society organizations, the government has stepped in to help bring home 120 trafficking victims so far. Seven of the traffickers were arrested, and have since been released on bail.

Garanowako knows that, despite her ordeal, she’s one of the lucky ones. According to officials, there are more than 300 Zimbabwean girls who have been trafficked to Kuwait and are still trapped there. Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of the region, is struggling to keep its people fed and employed. Severe drought – which the World Food Programme says will leave around 4.1 million Zimbabweans in need of food aid by January 2017 – a liquidity crunch, and high levels of unemployment and poverty have forced many to flee the country in search of jobs.

“Trafficking is a big issue, not only in Africa but globally,” says Lily Sanya, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) chief of mission in Zimbabwe. “It is a clandestine practice which has been made easy by globalization.”

The IOM has said forced labor is a global business worth $150 billion a year, and the International Labour Organization estimates that about 55 percent of trafficked victims are women, while 26 percent are children. Exact figures are hard to come by, but according to the U.S. Department of State 2016 report on trafficking in persons, Zimbabwean women are being lured to South Africa, China and the Middle East, among other countries. The report puts Kuwait on its Tier 2 watch list, meaning the state does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. It reveals that domestic employees work on average 14 to 16 hours a day while employers retain 80 to 90 percent of the workers’ wages. Some Kuwait employers also monitor and confine the workers, who are often in poor health due to lack of adequate nutrition and healthcare, according to the report.

When Women & Girls Hub approached the Kuwait embassy in Zimbabwe for comment, we were told there was no one available to speak on the issue.

In March, former Kuwait ambassador to Zimbabwe Ahmed al-Jeeran was implicated as the ring leader in the trafficking syndicate that trapped Garanowako and other girls, accused of advertizing vacancies for non-existent nursing jobs in Kuwait in the local press. Jeeran was allegedly working with his secretary, Brenda Avril May, who is accused of being the contact person, as well as organizing airfare and visa arrangements, for trafficked women. Both Jeeran and May deny any wrongdoing.

Contacted by Women & Girls Hub for comment, May said, “I will not talk on that issue of trafficking,” and referred us to her lawyer. The cases of all those implicated are still pending in court, with possible sentences of up to two years in prison to be issued if they end in convictions.

While Zimbabwe has helped trafficking victims escape their dire situations, the women say support ends almost as soon as they get back home. When Garanowako returned to Zimbabwe, she spoke to a counselor the day she arrived, but has had no follow up since. She and the other women who were repatriated were given $100 and some groceries. Kindness Paradza, chairman of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, says the government is working with partners such as the IOM to assist victims of trafficking to start income-generating projects.

But the negative impact of Garanowako’s experience in Kuwait is more complicated than an empty bank account. Her mother, Mututa, says that, ever since her daughter left for Kuwait, the family home has been wracked with distrust and conflict. “When I got news that the girls were trafficked to Kuwait, l was heavily traumatized,” says Mututa. “On the other hand, her father accuses me of leading Hazvinei into trafficking.”

The Woman Bringing Boko Haram Wives Back to Their Families

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Siobhán O’Grady

Social media activism inspired Fatima Askira to collect clothes for women affected by Boko Haram. Nearly four years later, she is pioneering programs to help them rejoin their communities.

In early 2013, as women and children fleeing Boko Haram flooded into the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, Fatima Askira watched them arrive to under-resourced makeshift camps with nothing more than the tattered clothes on their backs.

At the time, she didn’t consider herself particularly qualified to help them. She had recently graduated from the University of Maiduguri with a degree in botany, and had little experience working with victims of conflict – especially ones who may have survived brutal attacks, kidnappings and rape at the hands of the militant organization that has, in recent years, killed more than 20,000 and displaced millions more across northeastern Nigeria and the surrounding Lake Chad region.

But after bearing witness to their suffering in her hometown, Askira was inspired to start with what she knew how to do: collect clothes to donate to some of the displaced. With the help of a social media campaign, her charity drive ballooned from a small-scale local collection into a national volunteer network that brought donated clothing, toiletries and food to Maiduguri from across Nigeria. Askira, now 26, has since formalized that effort into the Borno Women Development Initiative. She and the NGO’s 19 other volunteers and staff focus on working with local government officials and humanitarian agencies to run reintegration programs at safe houses for women who either willingly joined or were forcibly recruited by Boko Haram.

Women & Girls Hub spoke with Askira about the challenges that arise when these women leave the extremist group and try to rejoin their old communities.

Women & Girls Hub: Do the women who end up at these safe houses have a variety of experiences in captivity, or do they share a similar narrative of what life was like under Boko Haram?

Fatima Askira: There are different kinds of women being rescued. The women who did not go into the bush but who were living under Boko Haram control because their villages were taken over by the group are the ones who can more easily reintegrate into the camps, because they were not really radicalized.

But some of the women have been wives to Boko Haram, and they were rescued by the Nigerian army and are now being kept in safe homes. Most of them were married to Boko Haram voluntarily and were not forced into it, because they married [the Boko Haram fighters] when they were still in our society. When their husbands were chased out of the communities, then the women followed them. Some of the women followed voluntarily, some were forced.

When I was speaking with one of the girls recently, I asked her what it was like to be living for so long with Boko Haram. I said, “Didn’t you feel like you wanted to come back to your family after all these years that you stayed with Boko Haram?” And she said, “Fatima, it’s not like I have a choice. He’s my husband and I married him because I love him and then this happened. And I thought of my parents for a while, and then I had to forget about them because life goes on.”

Women & Girls Hub: For the women who left their families voluntarily, how do their parents react if their daughters want to come home?

Askira: It’s not possible to integrate any of them quickly back into their families. They may be radicalized already, so they have to go through the deradicalization process and learn countering narratives before we can integrate them back into their communities. And some of the parents say they won’t accept them immediately after they are rescued. You know how hard it is for them: Your daughter spent about four years with Boko Haram in a place like that, you don’t know who she is, you’ve forgotten what she looks like.

But from the other side, some of the women at the safe house don’t socialize, they don’t talk to you. It’s often easier for them to speak with each other because they are like a family now. Still, sometimes it’s possible to reach them. In one instance, we played them propaganda audio from an imam who split from Boko Haram earlier this year and then condemned the group for being too violent. He hadn’t left Boko Haram entirely, but there was some balance and sanity to what he said. They heard how violent it was and they heard from a person they trust that it is wrong.

Women & Girls Hub: Do the women seem to have been deeply involved in the conflict itself?

Askira: They don’t even know the extent of the violence caused by their husbands, that’s the most amazing thing. When we played a video of a bomb blast and the destruction it caused to try to explain this to them, there was so much surprise on their faces. When they were with Boko Haram, they didn’t go out and they were kind of restricted in an area without access to news or information.

Women & Girls Hub: How do you see your project moving forward?

Askira: The next project we want to do is set up an informal school for the women to be able to access a little bit of Western knowledge. We believe that would maybe bring out their interest in going back to school and tell them school is not in conflict with their religion, but rather that school will further motivate them or be the source of a future for them, because after school you can get a job.

Women & Girls Hub: You’ve described a lot of damage to the local community caused by Boko Haram. Have you faced difficulties convincing the community that reintegration is necessary for peace?

Askira: What I’ve come to believe is that the Boko Haram fighters, some of them are victims, too. Equally as we have families, they have families, and their families did not commit any wrong in society because their children joined this movement. So if we’re going to bring some sort of balance, we need to go down to the communities, reorient them and sensitize them to the importance of accepting some of these people back.

When I started, initially a lot of people said, “It won’t work out, why are you wasting your time? Nobody will support you, nobody will assist you.” And I said, “I still want to do it.” And sometimes it’s very challenging for us to access materials and reach out to others. But you just keep doing it in any little way you can.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Shelter Helps Stigmatized Young Mothers Build Happy Families in Sudan

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Hannah McNeish

In Sudan, girls and young women who have children are often abandoned by their families and stigmatized in their communities. A shelter in Khartoum gives these mothers a home and works to help them build their families.

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Nour Hussein has been dreaming of happy families since she was a little girl, when she and her sister were put in Sudan’s largest institution for “lost” children. After her mother, who suffered from a mental-health illness, was placed in a psychiatric hospital, Hussein and her sister were sent to Mygoma, a state-run home in the capital, Khartoum. At around five years old, Hussein and some of the other children were transferred to private care homes. She moved again when she was 12 and eventually tracked down her mother six years later.

Although she got the chance to nurse her mother until her death, Hussein vividly remembers what it was like to grow up missing her. “Nothing in the world will give you anything like what a mother gives you, nowhere in the world,” she says.

Women and girls in Sudan who have children out of wedlock – even in cases of rape and incest – are often cast out by their families. “There’s no way to live in the community with your child without a father, especially if the girl is not married. The family doesn’t accept the child. They say, ‘Go away from this home until there is a father,’” says Hussein. “They will put the girl in the street, and police collect her and put her in an institution.”

There are many of these institutions, mostly government-run, dotted around Sudan, full of children whose mothers chose to have them instead of risking backstreet abortions. But mothers aren’t allowed to stay with their babies. To keep their children means to be ostracized from their communities; rejoining their families means having to leave their children behind.

So in 2010, Hussein and several friends from her childhood days in care homes set up the Shamaa shelter, a place where instead of abandoning their children, mothers could stay with them and work towards building a family. Since opening, the shelter has helped 815 women and girls, giving them a place to live in a quiet Khartoum neighborhood, and providing medical and psychosocial services during pregnancy, birth and the first stages of motherhood.

The women and girls can stay as long as they like – from a few months up to a year – while Hussein and her team look after them and their babies as they go through mediation with parents and partners.

In most cases, and only when the young mothers agree, Shamaa helps to arrange a marriage with the child’s biological father. If he is deemed unsuitable or is rejected by the girl or her family, Shamaa helps to find the girl a new partner from a pool of what the organization calls “volunteer fathers.” These men, whom Shamaa finds and heavily vets, agree to marry single mothers out of a sense of duty to care for a vulnerable child, which the Quran highlights as a great act of kindness.

“All these girls, we help them, and now they are inside our community and living with their families, with the real father or sometimes a volunteer father,” says Hussein. “We make families.”

Zara, a 30-year-old teacher with a 13-month-old baby, thought her life was over when she discovered she was pregnant and the father refused to marry her. “I was so afraid,” she says, adding that she was scared of her brothers. When asked how she thought they’d react, she switches from Arabic to English. “Maybe kill me,” she says.

Now Zara is about to start a new life outside the shelter with an engineer who started off as a volunteer father. “I love him,” she says with a grin, as she presses one hand to her chest and cradles her baby with the other, her engagement ring glinting under the strip light in a room bare but for three single beds, all occupied.

“Shamaa has given me everything. First, it was a safe place to be with my baby, and now they have found someone for me to marry so I can live with him and my baby.”

Shamaa is also working with Sudan’s Ministry of Welfare and Ministry of Interior to get more than 2,000 children and young people who were abandoned or born out of wedlock birth certificates, social security numbers and passports. Giving a child legal status in Sudan requires that the mother be married to the father or at least get him to sign a form officially recognizing the child as his.

Struggling to pay for its shelter due to funding cuts from larger charities, Shamaa will soon have to downsize. But its work will continue, says Hussein, whose first name, Nour, means “light” in Arabic.

“We need to make a light in our community,” she says, to make people realize “that these children are not guilty” and need to be nurtured by families to avoid them ending up in large institutions, where development disorders are common.

“We are all Sudanese. These children, they must accept them, they must love them.”

The names of some of the women in this story have been changed to protect their identities.

How to protect the Chibok girls from reliving their horror - BBC News

Writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani examines the challenges for the recently released Chibok girls. After being held captive by Boko Haram militants, safety should be the girls' first priority, and traveling to the United States should afford them that opportunity, as well as the chance at an education. However; overexposure from retelling their stories has made it difficult for many of the girls to process their experiences and experience the privacy and anonymity they need to shed the stigma of their experiences. Read on for more.

bbc.co.uk - To enable the 21 recently freed Chibok girls to avoid the stigma usually associated with Boko Haram captivity, a leader of Nigeria's Chibok community has called for them to be sent to the US to continue their education.

But other dangers may await the girls if they travel abroad.

Some of the 57 Chibok girls who managed to escape a few hours after the Islamist militants stormed their school in April 2014 and ferried them away in trucks, are already being educated in the US.

Some of them told me how pleased they are about their former classmates' release. They also considered it a good idea for the 21 girls to move to the US as they did.

"Maybe it will help them forget what they have been through in the past," Patience Bulus said.

"They will not be scared here in America, and they will forget about what happened with them," Kauna Yaga added.

But forgetting is one thing that these Chibok girls were not allowed to do until just a few months ago.

Read more

Want to receive earlybird invitations to our global events, custom-tailored content we think you'll love, and get exclusive access to "The World Women Report"?

Join Us by Subscribing NOW!

For Kinshasa’s Homeless Girls, a Life of Abuse and Servitude

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Didem Tali

Of the 25,000 street children in Congo's capital, the majority are young men. But while boys can make money through manual labor, girls often find that prostitution and exploitation are their only options for survival.

KINSHASA, Congo – When Cecilia’s parents died suddenly in 2009, there was nobody left to look after her. “I had some older siblings but they are all in Angola. Nobody asked after me,” she says. “They just abandoned me.” Only 8 years old at the time, she ended up living on the streets of the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), hungry, cold and afraid. So it seemed like a miracle when, after two weeks of homelessness, she was approached by a woman who offered to adopt her. “You are too pretty to be on the streets,” the woman had said to Cecilia. “Come home with me and I’ll make you my daughter.”

That was how she found herself working as a “domestic house slave,” says Cecilia, now 15. For six years, she was physically, verbally and sexually abused, sometimes by the six biological sons and daughters of her new “mother.” Then one day, the woman punched Cecilia so hard, she broke her front teeth. Cecilia ran away, back to the streets, where she has been living ever since.

Cecilia is one of 25,000 street children in Kinshasa, a figure that, according to UNICEF, has almost doubled in the last decade. The DRC’s high fertility rates combined with the ongoing urban sprawl of one of the biggest cities in Africa means the number of homeless children continues to increase, says the organization. It’s a problem across sub-Saharan Africa, where 200 million children are living in poverty, at risk of exploitation, abuse and disease. And in many places, those risks are disproportionately greater for girls.

“There are more boys in the streets of Kinshasa than girls – I would say a third of the street children are girls,” says Jean-Pierre Godding, a project manager at the grassroots charity Street Children of Kinshasa.

But, “girls are considered more ‘useful’ than boys. Families usually exploit girls as much as they can.”

For one thing, girls are more vulnerable to sexual violence, says Godding. “Boys can do small manual jobs to make a bit of money here and there. But girls in the streets often end up in prostitution.”

Those who don’t become sex workers might get pulled into domestic work. “Families tend to keep girls to run the household chores and help raise the other children in the family,” says Godding. “Many girls also marry young, which is another reason why they don’t end up in the streets as much as the boys.”

Chloe, 16, turned to prostitution when she ran away from home two years ago. “My sisters wanted to marry me off to an elderly man,” she says. “I’d rather be in the streets and do sex work than be an old man’s wife.” For Chloe, like so many other girls on the streets, rape, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, violence and stigma are everyday realities. But even when their circumstances change for the better, it’s difficult for them to leave that world. “They usually have a ‘boyfriend’ who solicits customers for them in return of protection,” says Godding. “Their self-esteem and perception [of themselves] take a significant hit.”

Organizations like Street Children of Kinshasa can offer support for the city’s young homeless people, providing dorms, some education and food. Sometimes, the organization can trace the families of abandoned children and negotiate with them to reunify the family. It also offers micro-credit programs to help the families start small businesses and thus have better economic means.

But Godding believes keeping children off the streets means going back to where they came from. “The only way to permanently help out these girls is economic empowerment and development for the children and their communities,” he says.

According to Clemence Petit-Perot, a program director at the Children’s Radio Foundation, which uses radio and broadcast training in Africa to boost community dialogue and participation, giving street children temporary shelter, protection and education might be quick wins. But long-term solutions, she says, lie in changing public perceptions and mobilizing communities.

“Street children in Kinshasa and the rest of Africa suffer from intense stigma,” says Petit-Perot. “Most people see them merely as thieves or prostitutes. If there’s a crime [in a rundown area] the police and the community usually blame the street children.”

“A strong dialogue is the only way for communities to understand that street children are complex human beings with difficult decisions and challenges, rather than just shadows.”

Neither Chloe nor Cecilia see their situations as inevitable. Chloe wants to quit sex work one day and go to school. Cecilia loves clothes and dreams of becoming a fashion designer. But both know there is no easy path off the street.

“People tell me I am very good with fashion and styling. I would really love to go to fashion school and learn more,” says Cecilia, who makes sure to put on beautiful skirts, necklaces and bracelets every day. “But I don’t know if I can do that. I need to go to high school first.”

The names and personal details of some of the children have been changed to protect their identities.

This story was reported with the support of an African Great Lakes Fellowship from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Syrian Girls Say Building Minds Will Help Build Futures

This article originally appeared on Refugees Deeply and the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about the global migration crisis and issues affecting women and girls, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list as well as the Refugees Deeply email list. By Fiona Duggan

Fiona Duggan, of the children’s charity Theirworld, writes about the aspirations of Syrian girls she met in Turkey – a country where more than 60 percent of refugee girls are out of school.

“Education is important because it builds a person’s mind, and the mind will build the future,” says Ethar, a 15-year-old Syrian girl, with a winning smile.

Explaining why going to school is important to her, the teenager, who fled Aleppo with her family four years ago, is unwavering in her conviction. Now living in Gaziantep, Turkey, she attends a school for Syrian refugee children.

This Tuesday was International Day of the Girl – an occasion to commemorate and further acknowledge the importance of girls, their potential and the role they play in building stable and equitable communities. But it is also a time to recognize the barriers they face, devise the means to overcome them, and start putting a plan into action.

Girls and women are subject to unique vulnerabilities in crises and conflicts. Displacement, poverty and the breakdown of built-in familial and social protections can place them at higher risk of sexual abuse, violence, exploitation and psychosocial distress. Conflict often exacerbates poverty, and girls can be pulled out of school or even forced into early marriages to alleviate economic burdens on traditional family structures.

The Syrian refugee crisis is no different. A new briefing paper published by Theirworld highlights an alarming statistic. In Turkey, more than 60 percent of Syrian refugee girls are out of school. This means that more than 370,000 female refugees under 18 years old are at risk of being forced into child labor, early marriage or other forms of exploitation. There has also been a dramatic increase in the number of child marriages – 15 percent of Syrian refugee girls living in Turkey now get married before the age of 18.

I met with Ethar during the second week of October. A keen robotics enthusiast, she enjoys nothing more than tinkering with her robot’s mechanics and programming its every move. She is remarkably eloquent and poised when she talks about education.

“It’s our right … it’s our right to build the future. Building the future needs boys and girls. Without education, girls will not reach their potential, which not only harms them, but also the communities they live in,” she explains, building the logic of her argument with every sentence.

Global education campaigners, including Theirworld, are calling for more to be done to get girls like Ethar into school. The Turkish government has been striving to increase the number of refugees enrolled in school by 50 percent, but more must be done to ensure the international community delivers the $1.4 billion financing – including the $71 million gap Turkey faces – that is desperately needed to enroll all Syrian refugee children, and vulnerable children in host communities, in school by December 2016. That time is fast approaching.

World leaders have promised on a few occasions to ramp up educational commitments, but so far they have failed to deliver on their promises. To keep our promises to children – who are, after all, the architects of our future world – we must keep up the pressure to ensure all Syrian refugee children go back to school, and that they return soon.

But this also means making sure both girls and boys go back to school. Not only is current funding insufficient, the U.N.-led education plan itself fails to acknowledge the gender differences that affect children returning to school.

The plan clearly points out a number of barriers to education, including language constraints, psychosocial support, incentives for teachers, social integration, transportation and access to temporary learning centers. But the lack of a strategic focus on creating equal access for both genders further threatens the futures of Syrian refugee girls, who are left out of education and remain at risk. In order for the humanitarian response to be effective, programs and targeted interventions in countries with large refugee populations such as Turkey must be sensitive to gender-specific needs.

This means we must ask the girls what they want and need. At the same time, we must also improve access to free, quality education for all Syrian refugees, regardless of gender or age.

Farah, a 16-year-old Syrian girl also living in Gaziantep, has faith in the power of education and her female friends.

“Anyone can do anything if they have the will to do it. The world is open to them. Nothing is impossible,” she says. The optimism of girls like Farah who have endured a lifetime’s worth of hardship in the short span of their young lives is remarkable. It must be harnessed.

We as a global community must work together to open the world of education to them. Remember Farah’s words – nothing is impossible.

Images provided by Theirworld, a global children’s charity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Women & Girls Hub.

Girls Take a Place at the Table to Discuss U.N.’s 2030 Agenda

This article originally appeared Oct. 12 on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Christine Chung

The U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals promise gender equality, but a panel marking the International Day of the Girl agreed that achieving the goals requires monitoring and active participation by girls to make sure governments deliver.

In Geneva, there was no missing the fact that yesterday was International Day of the Girl. Various U.N. offices usually reserved for dignitaries, like those of the director-general and the UNICEF Geneva liaison, were taken over by girls, while a flash mob of young women and their supporters gathered at the Place des Nations in front of the square’s iconic statue of a giant three-legged chair.

To mark the day, Plan International organized a panel featuring young activists from Zambia and Germany, U.N. officials, and Colombia’s ambassador, to discuss how girls fit into the U.N.’s 2030 agenda.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in September 2015, comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets for people, planet and prosperity. According to Alfonso Barragues, director of the U.N. Population Fund in Geneva, the main difference between the SDGs and the Millennium Development Goals, which were set out in 2000 with a 2015 deadline, is “a paradigm change.”

“The MDGs were an aid contract between developed and developing countries,” Barragues told the panel. “The SDGs are a social contract, so it’s an agenda for girls and their generation.” Panel members agreed that a key tool in carrying out that agenda is data.

The fifth SDG specifically aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Speaking on the panel, Ngandu, a young woman from Zambia, laid out the prejudices she faces every day. “To be a girl in Zambia is to be a second-class citizen,” she said. “People believe that boys are more knowledgeable than girls.”

“Girls face human rights challenges that are enormous, massive, but their situation is essentially invisible,” Barragues told Women & Girls Hub. “This is an invisibility that takes place in front of our eyes.”

As part of the panel, Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, CEO of Plan International, said that “the invisible girl is the first barrier to be broken.” Plan International’s new report, “Counting the Invisible,” shows how data not only reflects gender differences and inequalities, but also provides girls and those advocating for their rights a useful tool to demand accountability. “The SDGs are not a framework but a promise,” said Albrectsen. “Promises need to be monitored. Everyone needs to hold their governments to account.”

Barragues referred to data as a fundamental tool, saying, “Emphasis on data would kill several birds with one stone: for planning, evidence-based advocacy and ultimately strengthening the social movements of girls.”

After an audience member commented on the difficulties in addressing the needs of sex-trafficking victims, the panel moderator, U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore, noted the challenge of giving attention to both data and the voices of those whose experiences it aims to quantify.

“We can’t measure everything. At the end of the day, we have to address the root causes, not just the symptoms, which are easier to measure,” said Barragues. “Social norms and attitudes that come from patriarchal views that women are inferior, these create the power imbalances that put girls at a disadvantage.”

Gender bias is ingrained in the measurement process, resulting not only in the lack of data but even in “bad” data, write contributors Mayra Buvinic and Ruth Levine in “Counting the Invisible.” One consequence is that data can misrepresent reality so that women appear more dependent and less productive than they actually are, which in turn influences policy decisions.

In addition to the importance of gathering better data, the panel also discussed investing in quality education and facilitating active participation by girls in policy discussions as keys to empowerment. Speakers both on the panel and in the audience noted that a solution to gender inequity can only be achieved with the participation of boys and men.

“We should empower women, but we can’t leave men behind,” said Luca, a young woman from Germany on the panel. “We rise, and we take them with us.”

Barragues said there are promising efforts to involve men in the process of empowering women and girls. He points to the International Geneva Gender Champions, an initiative launched by the U.N. Office at Geneva and the United States Mission to the U.N.

“These are heads of agencies and organizations and ambassadors committing to advancing gender equality in the work of the international community in Geneva,” he said. “For example, the initiative promotes panel parity at those events organized by the U.N. There are over 150 champions already mobilized, including the high commissioner for human rights. In fact, the majority are men, which is helpful to promote men’s engagement on gender equality, but is also telling in terms of who holds rank. Ultimately, we are striving to see parity in all areas.”

Shining a Light on Invisible Girls and Women: Why Gender Data Matters

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list.

By Zahra Sethna

On International Day of the Girl, girls are demonstrating their ability to change the world. Yet more needs to be done to make all girls visible, including gathering meaningful data about their lives, writes Plan International’s Zahra Sethna.

It’s hard to ignore a girl like Masline. An 18-year-old student at a school just outside of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, she is smart, confident and determined. Talking about her hobbies makes her smile. She loves to write poetry and is especially inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello.

Masline is a great example of what happens when girls are empowered to reach their potential. She sailed through her secondary school exams with top marks, and once she finishes her current course of study she would like to become a teacher and act as a role model for other girls.

The sad truth, however, is that around the world there are millions of girls who don’t have the opportunity to fulfill their dreams like Masline.

In a recent qualitative research study of vulnerable girls in Zimbabwe, 81 percent of the 121 girls Plan International spoke to said that at one point or another they had to drop out of school, either temporarily or permanently. Most of the time this was because they couldn’t afford tuition and school fees. Once out of school, they said it was hard to go back and doubly hard to fight off the pressure they faced to get married and lessen the financial strain on their families.

When girls drop out of school and get married as children, they often become invisible to governments and policymakers because their realities are not being captured in official data and statistics. They become much easier to overlook and more vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and violence.

The plight of invisible girls is the focus of our new report, “Counting the Invisible,” which makes the case that improved data on the barriers facing girls and women is essential to achieve true equality.

How Data Can Help

Just having more data will not make all the difference to these girls. Data alone can’t change the world, but when data is collected and analyzed in the right way, they certainly can help make change possible. The insights it reveals can help inform policy and program choices. It can identify needs and challenges and help lead us to the groups of people who face the biggest barriers to realizing their rights, such as rural communities, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities. It can provide the evidence advocates need to press for change. And it can show us what works and what does not, so we can be sure to invest in the solutions that really transform lives.

Here’s an example: Let’s say a municipality wants to address the barriers girls face in getting to school. The municipality puts public transportation options in place so girls don’t have to walk long distances, and then it measures how many girls have access to that public transportation. Still, the problem persists – many girls still walk long distances or fail to attend school.

What this municipality failed to do was talk to the girls themselves to fully understand the challenges they face. If they had done some qualitative research, they might have learned that many girls are afraid for their safety in public. In Nicaragua, 65 percent of the girls we spoke to said they do not feel safe on public transportation and 59 percent do not feel safe walking on their own in public places. If girls don’t feel safe riding the bus or walking by themselves in public, having access to public transportation has little meaning in their lives.

When data reveals the scope and scale of an issue, it becomes harder for policymakers to avoid taking action.

That much-needed context is one part of the problem. Sparse data is another. For example, a lack of data on how much time women spend on unpaid household work has led to a misguided impression that women in developing countries have free time to spend on training programs or other well-intentioned community development interventions. When built on an inaccurate assumption of how much time women can afford to spend participating, these interventions often see high dropout rates and low returns on investment.

When data reveals the scope and scale of an issue, it becomes harder for policymakers to avoid taking action. Advocacy efforts in Kiribati, a small island nation in the Pacific Ocean, led the government to conduct its first study on violence against women and children in 2008. Until then, gender-based violence was considered an issue to be dealt with in private. There were no policies or laws in place and little clarity as to how police were expected to respond.

When the results of the study were released in 2010, the nation was shocked to learn that nearly 70 percent of women who had ever been partnered said they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner. On the back of these findings, some significant legal and social changes were made. This included a new national law, training for police and healthcare providers, changes to school curricula to teach children about respectful relationships and gender equality, services for survivors of violence, and special police units trained to deal with domestic violence. Data can, as this example shows, be a powerful force for change.

That’s why Plan International has joined with a group of like-minded partners to develop an independent measure to track progress for girls and women from now until 2030. This new initiative will produce an assessment that aims to become the leading source of information for advocates, activists, governments, civil society partners and others working to achieve gender equality.

By measuring and monitoring progress and gaps for girls and women, partners will hold governments and other stakeholders accountable for delivering on the commitments they have made. Partners will also complement existing data with original qualitative and perceptions data that more fully reflects girls’ and women’s realities and highlights their right to influence decisions affecting their lives.

The partnership has a simple vision: a world in which every girl and woman counts and is counted. A world in which every girl can, like Masline, learn, lead their own lives, make decisions about their future and, ultimately, thrive.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Women & Girls Hub.

Kudos and a Curse: Meet the Savior of Girls in Samburu

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Hannah McNeish

Josephine Kulea has saved over 1,000 girls in Kenya from forced marriage and the female genital mutilation that usually precedes it. Her work has earned praise from Barack Obama, but she says politicians back home won't support her work in case it loses them votes.

NAIROBI, Kenya – Her face has been plastered across billboards in New York and London and she was lauded by U.S. President Barack Obama on his visit to Kenya. But Josephine Kulea sees herself as still very much a grassroots activist. She works with communities in the area where she grew up, saving girls as young as seven from forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and either being pulled out of school or never getting the chance to go. Despite national laws banning child marriage and FGM, in Samburu culture, girls can be matched to men old enough to be their grandparents, and polygamy is common.

Once cursed to death by her family for breaking up a marriage between her uncle and a seven-year-old cousin, Kulea, 30, now runs the charity The Samburu Girls Foundation, which, to date, has stopped over 1,000 girls across four counties from marrying young and missing their education. Women & Girls Hub spoke to her about how it all started with her mother and why she became the target of a death curse.

Women & Girls Hub: How did you start helping girls?

Josephine Kulea: I was following in my mom’s footsteps. My mom also fights for girls to go to school within my community because she was taken out of high school to become my dad’s third wife.

Women & Girls Hub: What about your childhood?

Kulea: I finished school but every holiday when I came home there was a new [potential] husband who wanted to marry me. My uncles wanted to marry me off because my dad passed away when I was young. Everyone was over 45 or in their 50s. I was 12, 13, 14, 15. But my mom fought for me.

After I finished school I went to nursing college and came back to work in my village. The first two girls I rescued were my own cousins. The first was a 10-year-old who was supposed to be getting married. Then two days later I got a call to say the same man, my uncle, was going to marry the youngest girl in the family who was just seven years old. She had to go through FGM on the day of the wedding. She got married and two days later we went to get her and arrest my uncle, and that became history in my village. They even had a big meeting to curse me [to death] because it was considered a very bad thing to do.

Women & Girls Hub: How did you feel when you heard about the curse?

Kulea: I knew I was not in the wrong because I was just protecting child rights. I continued getting calls from women from the same village to rescue more girls. I paid their fees with my nursing salary. It was less than $200 a month. I spent almost everything [on the girls’ education] because you have to buy uniforms and books and pens.

Women & Girls Hub: How did the Samburu Girls Foundation come about?

Kulea: In 2012 we started the organization, registering it and making it official like an NGO, so now we can ask people for money. We are now reaching out to four counties – Samburu, Marsabit, Isiolo and Laikipia. The community has donated 15 acres of land. That’s where our girls stay, we have a dormitory and dining room. Safaricom [Kenya’s largest mobile phone company] is coming to build us classrooms soon and we hope to eventually have a fully fledged school because we’re spending a lot of money on taking these girls to schools across the country.

Women & Girls Hub: How many girls have you helped?

Kulea: We’ve rescued over 1,000 girls. We have 300 girls who are directly under our organizational support. When we rescue these girls, the families normally are bitter because they are missing out on the dowry. It is sometimes up to one year until the girls are accepted back [by their families]. We talk to the parents and counsel them and the girls. Eventually we reunite them. Some parents lie to us. They really want to marry them off again, so we tell the girls that they can always come back to us, they can call us and also they become our eyes in the village and they make sure their own sisters, cousins and neighbors are not going through the same thing.

Women & Girls Hub: Is there any sign parents are starting to value educating girls?

Kulea: The problem we have is the villages in these areas have been marginalized for so long. The illiteracy levels are so high: In Samburu county it’s 80 percent. Such communities have yet to understand the value of educating girls.

Women & Girls Hub: The culture of ‘beading’ – when men give young girls beads to “book” them for sex – is this changing?

Kulea: It is dying out around the cities because more people there have embraced education. But there are a few other areas where it is still very common and as much as we try to spread awareness that it’s wrong, people feel it’s still part of our culture. Some girls feel it makes them beautiful because someone has given them these beads.

Women & Girls Hub: What was it like getting mentioned by Obama?

Kulea: It was awesome! It felt nice because sometimes you work so hard, do a lot of work and you think you’re hidden in the bush and no one notices. We are yet to get those shout-outs from the local or county government.

Wonder Woman is The New UN Ambassador For Empowerment Of Women And Girls

What an icon for women and girls! Certainly young girls will look at Wonder Woman and say, "I want to be like her," and rightfully so, because Wonder Woman is strong. She is courageous. She is just as tough as the male superheroes. She is a leader. I see this notion as an opportunity for us to teach girls what kind of woman they should admire. In a world full of superficial, fake, and self(ie)-centered celebrity "idols," maybe another valuable approach is to appreciate the realness of make-believe heroes.

- Victoria Mendoza

indiatimes.com - Wonder Woman has been appointed as the new UN ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls. She will be officially titled on October 21, the character's 75th anniversary at the UN Headquarters in New York. The event will also launch the UN's global campaign supporting the fifth goal of Sustainable Development which is "to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls."

"Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world," said a UN spokesperson, adding that, "Providing women and girls with equal access to education, healthcare, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large."

Wonder Woman was coined during WWII, which was in itself path-breaking. Firstly. her character broke away from the damsel-in-distress characteristic attached to women in Superhero comics with male leads and saw her saving herself from bondage. And secondly the name itself Wonder Woman - not a girl - she was a woman at par with superhero men. DC is finally handing Wonder Woman her dues in 2017 by releasing their first movie on one of the first female superheroes. And she will also be making an appearance in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Read more

Girl under 15 married every seven seconds, says Save the Children - BBC News

A new study by Save the Children; an international nongovernmental organization promoting children's rights; paints a bleak picture for many girls, especially those in areas hit by conflict or other crises. 

The study also studies girls' situations around the world, explores ways to empower and give voices to girls, examines the importance of sexual and reproductive health services and more.

Read more below and at the link, or read the Save the Children study.

bbc.co.uk - One girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds, according to a new report by Save the Children.

The study says girls as young as 10 are forced to marry much older men in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Somalia.

Save the Children says early marriage can trigger a cycle of disadvantage across every part of a girl's life.

Conflict, poverty and humanitarian crises are seen as major factors that leave girls exposed to child marriage.

"Child marriage starts a cycle of disadvantage that denies girls the most basic rights to learn, develop and be children," said Save the Children International CEO Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

"Girls who marry too early often can't attend school, and are more likely to face domestic violence, abuse and rape. They fall pregnant and are exposed to STIs (sexually transmitted infections) including HIV."

The report, called Every Last Girl, ranks countries based on the hardest place to be a girl based on schooling, child marriage, teen pregnancy, maternal deaths and the number of women in parliament.

Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia were ranked at the bottom of the index.

Read more

Meet Madison, a 9-year-old Champion for Change

Madison Harrison, who launched her own photography business at 7, has loved photography since she was a  toddler. The young entrepreneur, now 9, posted a photo supporting the #62MillionGirls campaign and speaks out about the importance of girls receiving an education.  Read more here and follow the for the full interview with Harrison, where she talks about her passions in photography and her support of Girl Rising's mission to help girls everywhere achieve their dreams.

Visit Photos With Madison and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

girlrising.com - While most 9 year olds are busy making memories, Madison Harrison is also busy capturing them.

Her interest in photography was sparked at her third birthday party and at the age of seven, Madison started her own photography business.

“I love to photograph little girls and their dolls or boys and their toys,” Madison says on what she likes most about photography.

In two short years she’s gone from photographing her friends and flowers (still two of her favorite things to photograph) to organizing dress and canned food fundraisers and even photographing two weddings.

Girl Rising first met this young professional during the #62MillionGirls campaign where she posted a photograph to show her support.

“I am so happy that this campaign is letting the world know that there are so many girls who are not in school,” Madison says. “The more people know, the more it will make a difference. “

One thing that we love about Madison is that she’s working hard to make a difference in the world through her photography projects.

Read the whole story here.

Girl Scouts Exec: Girls Shouldn't Pursue Perfection

The Internet recently shook its collective head when a side-by-side comparison of Girls' Life and Boys' Life magazines illustrated the differences in the messages we send to girls and boys about goals, dreams, and what to strive for in life. (Some even "redesigned" the cover with a version highlighting girls' accomplishments and potential.) While the covers weren't designed by the same teams and fashion and beauty can be powerful tools, it's a stark reminder of the message girls often get from society: Boys can strive for careers and  are encouraged to "Explore your future," while girls are given advice about how to look pretty. 

Chief Girl and Parent Expert at Girl Scouts of the USA Andrea Bastiani Archibald used the magazines' differing approaches as an opportunity to address the larger issue of girls and perfection. Read below and click through to learn why teaching our girls to strive for the appearance of perfection actually holds them back--now and throughout their lives.

And whether it's with the latest fashions and full makeup or in a T-shirt and messy ponytail, may we encourage all girls to explore their futures.

To join Girl Scouts as a girl member or adult volunteer, visit www.girlscouts.org/join.

motto.time.com - The bombardment of image- and status-driven messages today’s girls and young women receive through media and our culture at large is destructive. Success is the currency for entry—or rather, the illusion of success. Finding just the right Instagram filter to ensure your latest selfie as enviable and drool-worthy as possible is a must for boosting your social capital. And girls are often the most impacted in this “nothing-less-than-success” theater.

Social media recently erupted over the controversy surrounding the cover of the September issue of Girls’ Life magazine (touting multiple beauty tips and how-tos on luring a potential boyfriend for its core audience) compared to the cover of Boys’ Life (splashed with the more substantive headline “Explore Your Future”). These dueling magazine covers highlight the stark difference between how society communicates life priorities and the trappings of success to girls versus boys, and serves to reaffirm an obsession with cultivating a perfect, unattainable façade.

If girls internalize the idea that everything undertaken in life must be image-centric, flawlessly executed and successful, that may cause fear of venturing beyond one’s comfort zone—or of even trying. Because if there’s a chance that you’re going to mess up, and not do something perfectly, why risk it? Just imagine all the rites of passage a girl might not pursue for fear of embarrassment or failure: not trying out for a sports team, not raising her hand in class to answer a question, not approaching a classmate to make a new friend, not volunteering for an exciting class project. Being too afraid to embrace these important growth milestones has serious implications, putting girls at a disadvantage as they grow into women and venture out into a deeply competitive and demanding world.

Read more

Girl behind #1000BlackGirlBooks gets dream job

We've shared before about Marley Dias, the New Jersey middle-school student who saw a dearth of books representing young black girls and decided to do something about it. She's collected thousands of books so far featuring black female protagonists—far exceeding even her own ambitious goal. And now, Dias has been named an editor-in-residence for Elle.com, complete with Marley Mag, a publication inspired and spearheaded by Dias. We're so excited to see where this new opportunity leads: for Dias as well as for black girls and others everywhere who will now discover the strength, diversity, complexity, intelligence, joy, depth and more that black girls bring to books—and the world.

nj.com - When Marley Dias started her #1000BlackGirlBooks social media campaign to collect books featuring black girls as main characters, she didn't expect to exceed her goal of a thousand books.

Dias, an Essex County middle-schooler, came up with the campaign last year after becoming frustrated with the lack of black, female main characters in books she had to read for school, the ones filled with "white boys and their dogs."

But the effort drew a surplus of books — more than 7,000 so far — and a significant amount of attention from national media. Marley wound up a guest on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and later got to meet Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama.

Now the 11-year-old from West Orange has been made an editor-in-residence for Elle.com, which on Monday launched Marley Mag, a zine of her very own.

"When you see a character you can connect with, if they learn a specific lesson, you're more likely to apply that to your life," Dias told NJ Advance Media in January when talking about the impetus behind her book campaign. Dias, then a sixth grader at Thomas A. Edison Middle School, said her ultimate goal was to edit her own pop culture and lifestyle magazine.

Read more

'To teach a girl is to teach a whole society': Drought highlights importance of girls' education

All of Ethiopia is suffering the effects of the worst drought in half a century, but the country's girls and women are bearing the brunt of the suffering -- and now more than ever, helping women and girls will translate into helping the entire country. This report from ActionAid shows why supporting girls' education must remain a top priority worldwide.

actionaid.org - The worst drought that Ethiopia has seen for 50 years is ravaging the country and women and girls are being disproportionately impacted as mothers struggle to feed their children, girls drop out of school and both women and girls face rising levels of violence from men. As the strain to find food puts families under pressure, young girls like Chaltu are forced to make sacrifices.

“Last year the rain was not here so my family wasn’t able to get money to pay for education. I felt very sad because I had been in school for eight years, it was a very sad moment for me.”

As the El Nino-induced drought took a hold of Kombolcha, Ethiopia, 15-year-old Chaltu was forced to drop out of school. The failure of crops, death of livestock and the resulting financial strain of over ten million people being in need of food aid has led to a sharp decline in families’ incomes and the education of young girls is being sacrificed.

Of the 1158 students in Chaltu’s high school, 239 students have dropped out in the past year alone – a fifth of the school’s total population.

Read more

Women Investing in Women Joins 1st United State of Women Summit

When women do better, everyone does better. And standing together—standing united—is our best path to helping women thrive. That's the idea behind the first United State of Women Summit, which will bring together some of the most extraordinary women from around the country and world (including a team from Women Investing in Women Digital!) on June 14. Organized by White House Council on Women and Girls, the gathering will revolve around six central pillars of discussion: economic empowerment, health and wellness, educational opportunity, violence against women, entrepreneurship and innovation, and leadership and civic engagement.

In a video announcing the summit, women leaders including First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Williams, Tina Fey, Meryl Streep and more discuss women's role in the country and world. The women point out many areas women have advanced in recent years: earning more college

Anu Bhardwaj, Women INVESTING in Women DIGITAL Founder, is joined by Michelle Jaffee and Arya Bhardwaj at the first United State of Women Summit.

degrees than ever, coding in larger numbers, leading businesses, fighting for freedom and, as Winfrey says, "Turning struggle into strength" countless times. Women will continue to fight for pay equality, bodily autonomy, safety, equality in business and everywhere else, and so much more. They always have. The idea of the summit is to come together—and to exhort women and men everywhere to stand together, and stand with us.

"We stand stronger when we stand together," Obama said in the video. The first lady will join Winfrey in a conversation June 14 entitled "Trailblazing the Path for the Next Generation of Women."

We're thrilled to share that the summit will also include our very own founder, Anu Bhardwaj; her daughter, Arya Bhardwaj; and Michelle Jaffee, host of the "Women Investing in Women in Girls" radio show. We're honored to be included, and so proud that these amazing women will be representing Women Investing in Women Digital—and economic empowerment for all women and girls—at the summit.

Because, as Tina Fey says, "We're not done. We're definitely not done."