The Plan campaign and ‘Girl effect’ strive for girl empowerment. They aim to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty. Plan Netherlands ‘Because I’m a girl’ campaign started today Create Consultancy promotes gender equality and empowerment. All girls deserve an equal chance to boys.. According to the Plan campaign: ‘Girls can change the world. If they get a chance’.
One girl that did not get this chance was a girl I met in a refugee camp in Northern Uganda in 2004. She explained that she was raped by several soldiers. She was now raising the three children they had left her with on her own.
Was she the only girl?
In Malawi I also listened to girls and realised that they were trapped in a vicious poverty cycle. During inititiation ceremonies at early ages girls are told that ‘The first man to propose love to you is your man, you should not turn him down’. They follow this advice and soon get children at young ages. The boys easily leave the girl and child.
What can we do?
Poverty impedes girls from giving their children, and especially their girls, the opportunities they need to prosper. It is difficult for a girl to take care of her child on her own. Some of these girls eagerly accept any man and any behaviour. A way to increase gender equality is through education and awareness raising.
What about NGOs?
Outsiders, such as Non Governmental Organisations, do not need to tell these girls what is best for them and impose solutions. But, they can provide support when girls start realising what they want themselves and discover their potential to and act as a catalyst for change.
Because I’m a girl, or young woman and I notice in my work, surroundings and private life that it is more difficult to move ahead as a young woman in a men’s world, I support Plan in this campaign.
The Girl Effect is a movement to empower girls.
It is an initiative by Nike Foundation in collaboration with NoVo Foundation, UN foundation and Coalition for Adolescent Girls started in 2008. Watch this video (added to this blogpost in 2015) on the Girl effect:
Girls, we can make a difference!
Sign up for the Girl Declarationto put girls at the heart of the post-2015 development agenda.
Related campaigns (03/2015): UN He for she campaign, involving men and boys in order to reach gender equality and challenge gender roles.
