Defining themselves as a global movement, The Girl Effect is one of many campaigns demanding the world to acknowledge women and girls as key players to the development and poverty debate. Created by the Nike Foundation and in collaboration with other bodies such as the UN Foundation and Coalition for Adolescent Girls, the campaign aims to end the cycle of poverty caused by issues such as child marriage, teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. At the centre of the campaign is the idea that 250 million adolescent girls’ potential remains untapped due to poverty. If we provide good education, health and economic investment, women and girls will prosper and break the inter-generational cycle of poverty.
What can we do about this?
Well The Girl Effect is only asking a few simple things, that you share this knowledge and demand the world acknowledge that women are no longer second place to issues of human rights and development. In order for The Girl Effect to take place we first need to enter the needs of women and girls into the development debate. Easier said than done; policy makers need to be convinced that empowering girls will lead to the growth of economic assets. Currently, debates about women are still tied to the traditional threads of domestic violence and reproductive rights – things that are hugely important but ignore the larger idea that equality across all boards, whether educational, sexual or economic will tap into a powerful force not yet mobilised. And as The Girl Effect demonstrates, this force could be the key to breaking the global poverty trap of 1.29 billion people.
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Such a cool job! As a teenage girl in a developing country, though I am not one of the unlucky ones, I concern a lot about the current situation of girls and women in poverty. There’s gotta be a solution, otherwise it will be one of the biggest tragedy in human’s nature.