The Girl Effect: Invest in Girls

Today is the launch of the Girl Effect Blogging Campaign, a collaborative effort of hundreds of bloggers coming together to write about The Girl Effect on Oct 4, 2011.

To start, watch this 2 min video.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53yuF64UgSM&w=420&h=315]

It’s clear. The studies show that investment in women and girls can change the world and the way we live.

Growing up in a South Asian family of physicians, there was always a ‘conventional path’ for a girl to take. When I was 17, I attended a global entrepreneurship program where I met non-traditional women entrepreneurs and innovators who expanded my own view of my possibilities. The next year, I founded a high school Young Women’s Leadership conference where I invited female business leaders to tell their stories to girls in Pittsburgh.

Soon after, as a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, I turned my passion for women’s leadership into activism and began to work with Choice USA, a national women’s rights organization.  I became one of ten national leaders who mobilized the largest youth delegation of over 3,000 college students to attend the March for Women’s Lives on April 25, 2004, a gathering of over 1.15 million people in Washington, D.C.

As an organizer of the March, I worked tirelessly in college to find ways to further the causes of women’s health and reproductive freedom. I fondly recall the image of thousands of sleeping bags around me in Union Hall in Washington DC. Standing together wearing orange shirts, our youth contingent stood out in the sea of one million people on Capitol Hill. This unforgettable image was captured on the front page of the New York Times the next day. For my work organizing the march, I was named one of Teen People’s “20 Teens Who Will Change the World” and one of “15 Students You Don’t Know But Will” in Newsweek’s college edition.

When I look back at these formative years and my activism work, I can’t help but think about the investment that was made in me by women leaders. Now it is our turn to invest in the next generation of girls and women around the world who don’t have the same choices and possibilities.

Choice is not just a privilege, it has a moral dimension. The Girl Effect campaign is helping us invest in girls to change our world.

So, what can you do?

Follow or blog about the Girl Effect Campaign, join the conversation on Twitter/Facebook, donate to a women’s organization, or just be a MENTOR to a girl or young woman. Often, the biggest differences that we make are in our daily lives are to the young people we can touch in our everyday encounters.

And here’s a few more stats for your next conversation….

  • When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
  • When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man. (Chris Fortson, “Women’s Rights Vital for Developing World,” Yale News Daily 2003.)
  • One girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15. (Population Council, “Transitions to Adulthood: Child Marriage/Married Adolescents,”  www.popcouncil.org/ta/mar.html [updated May 13, 2008].)

Comments

  1. Manipulating others and playing games resists progress. Stay persistent in journey.

  2. Did you hear Dareja Academy won?

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