The Girl Effect
Today, I'd like to talk to you about The Girl Effect. You see, The Girl Effect is not only an initiative started by The Nike Foundation, with global partners comprising of the United Nations Foundation, Coalition for Adolescent Girls, CARE, BRAC, and more, but it is also defined thus:
THE GIRL EFFECT n. -- The powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate.
"If you want to end poverty and help the developing world, the best thing you can do is invest time, energy, and funding into adolescent girls. It's called The Girl Effect, because girls are uniquely capable of investing in their communities and making the world better."
Basically, investing in girls causes a ripple effect, and this wonderful factsheet has lots of lovely statistics to show us this:
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.)An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school:
15 to 25 percent. (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881 [Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels
of schooling among mothers. (George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 1207–27.)
This is a fantastic campaign raising awareness of the need to invest in girls in developing countries if we are to save the world. Please do check the campaign's website (full of information about why investing in girls will save the world, and what barriers they currently face), donate to the cause, or join the Facebook page.
Of course, whilst The Girl Effect consists of many excellent organisations, it's also worth noting, of course, that this is the exact ethos upon which my sister & I are operating Arohon, our charitable project whose first mission is to build and run a brand new women's education centre in rural Bangladesh. The idea here is to promote girl power, in a place where there is a lot of cultural opposition, and provide women and girls with the education, skills, and empowerment they need in order to follow their own path.
Do check out this video from The Girl Effect about Shumi, in Bangladesh. This story is typical of so many girls in rural Bangladesh, and the video is a wonderful demonstration of what women's empowerment can achieve. This is exactly what we're trying to achieve in Nikrail, Bangladesh.
You can, of course, find out more about Arohon over at http://arohon.org.uk/ or even donate here if you want to help! (Remember, it's only two months till we climb Mt Kilimanjaro to convince you, too!)
