I’ve been thinking a lot about girls and boldness lately.
One of the images that has really stuck in my mind is that of Monday Yuguda, one of the Nigerian girls who was kidnapped by the Boko Haram. She was in the kidnappers’ open-topped truck with some 300 of her school friends, and when the truck slowed to a crawl as it navigated the dense forest at night, Monday looked up at a tree and its low hanging branches and in that split second chose to risk all for life. She reached out and grabbed a branch and swung herself into the tree as the truck rumbled on. Monday waited in the tree until she felt she could run and then she ran as fast as she could through the forest and back to the town of Chibok, where the attack had taken place. What is it that gave Monday the courage to take that risk rather than stay frozen with fear on the truck?
And what can we do as a community to give girls the confidence to act while also increasing their safety and security?
In June 2008 the Population Council and MicroSave Consulting worked closely with financial institutions to design girl-friendly savings accounts based on market research that was undertaken with girls in Uganda order to learn more about their cash flow and financial needs. These accounts were designed taking into account this information and then the concepts were tested with girls and bank staff were trained to be responsive to girls’ needs and priorities.
The product was then launched and girls were recruited at a local community level and supported to form and conduct Safe Space Groups and to open accounts. This pilot phase and intervention ran for an 18 month period. The Population Council and MicroSave tracked the girls in Uganda who participated in Safe Spaces Group meetings with girls who didn’t. Those girls who only had a savings account but did not receive reproductive health information and the social support that comes with being part of a group were exposed to increased risk of experiencing sexual harassment and exploitation. In contrast to this, those girls who participated in all program components were protected from sexual exploitation and violence and they demonstrated significant improvements in their knowledge of reproductive health issues. Girls also shared anecdotal evidence about how their financial savings enabled them to become more economically independent and less likely to accept money from men in exchange for sexual favors. These findings confirmed that girls need a combination of social, health and economic assets, and that increasing a girl’s access to finance, without accompanying social support, skills, and self-esteem, can actually increase her vulnerability.
The Population Council has done some important research that establishes that well-conceived, focused and implemented girl initiatives have resulted in girls’ increased skills, health information and health-seeking behavior, as well as marrying later and being active in financial and economic decisions facing their families and communities.
The role of female mentors and provision of safe spaces for girls are two strategies adopted by Population Council and the UN Population Fund that have proven to make a sizeable difference to girls’ confidence and well being in different communities. This has included community-based girls clubs in Guatemala where more than 2 million children don’t attend school. Most of these children are indigenous girls living in rural areas where isolation, extreme poverty, lack of education and social marginalization renders many indigenous girls invisible. Through these girls’ clubs, the program helps girls aged 8 to 18 to come together with their mothers to gain important life skills. Sessions cover improving self-esteem, developing aspirations, planning for the future, learning about sexual and reproductive health, and learning how to prevent HIV/AIDS. The clubs, which are run by the girls themselves, also help members develop leadership skills. Many of these girls have now returned to school and are planning their futures beyond getting an education, and in the process their families and communities are strengthened. To date the program has reached more than 9,000 indigenous girls in 40 rural communities and is now being extended to another 75 communities in Guatemala using Radio Education and distance education to support girls connecting to their own power to initiate change for themselves, their families and their countries. This impact also reverberates to other women in their families, thus having inter-generational impact.
Today, thanks to the intervention of Global Fund for Women (GFW) grantee Girls Empowerment Network-Malawi (GENET), both local and national governments in Malawi hail Chitera as a model community. Since 2011, girls’ school enrollment has increased by over 50%, more than 30 girls have been rescued from marriages, and cases of child marriage are now rare in the community. Girls are speaking up when their rights are violated and about issues that affect them, such as the need for more science, technology, engineering and math classes in school. They are also using the community’s bylaws, the Girls Network, and the Traditional Authority (now Senior Chief) to protect their rights. Even adult community members and leaders, for the most part, speak with pride at the positive transformation in their community resulting from GENET’s contributions.
Global Fund for Women has been funding Girls Empowerment Network-Malawi and this group has had phenomenal success as a result of its philosophy of equipping every member of its group with responsibility as an agent of change. Whether it is an individual girl advocating for her right to stay in school, a girl managing a difficult situation at home, a girl seeking out information on SRHR or being mentored by another girl or woman on speaking to a community, GENET equips each girl with a sense of personal responsibility and voice. As a result of this, in the communities where GENET is active, since 2011, girls’ school enrollment has increased by over 50%, more than 30 girls have been rescued from marriages, and cases of child marriage are now rare in the community. Girls are speaking up when their rights are violated and about issues that affect them, such as the need for more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes in school. Girls are also using the community’s bylaws, the Girls Network, and the Traditional Authority (now Senior Chief) to protect their rights. Even adult community members and leaders, for the most part, speak with pride at the positive transformation in their community resulting from GENET’s contributions.
In Haiti, a unique mentoring program is underway through a Haiti Adolescent Girls Network that has been supported by Population Council and other organizations. Here the Network connects girls to women mentors so that these girls can be supported in their dreams, issues and actions. The power of mentoring in terms of the boldness, awareness and confidence it invokes in girls is so evident, and it has the potential for transformational impact for girls and entire communities.
Fifty years ago, it was a group of seven girls and two boys who were mentored by a group of women on how to stand firm in the face of resistance to desegregated education. Turned away by Arkansas National Guard soldiers under orders from the Governor, the students finally entered safely three weeks later when the President of the United States sent the 101st Airborne to enforce the Supreme Court’s desegregation rulings. Here it was women’s bold actions that made this outcome possible. Civil Rights activist Daisy Bates gave the nine students (two boys and seven girls) the information, encouragement, and support they needed to enroll in Central High School. When the governor resorted to closing the schools in Little Rock to prevent integration, it was the (white middle class) women of the “Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools” who, with great courage and increasing militancy, organized the effort to open the schools, including mentoring the 7 girls and 2 boys, aged 16, who were at the front line of action. In so doing, they changed themselves and the community.
Gulalai Ismail is a bold peace builder and social justice activist. She lives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is one of the most fragile states in Pakistan. Religious extremism has grown to become one of the biggest security threats to the region and militant groups have been known to incite extremism and violence, increasingly among young people. For women especially, extremism has led to growing insecurity – many fear kidnap or worse.
At just 16 Gulalai Ismail created ‘Aware Girls’ with a group of school friends to change the lives of young women in Pakistan. They began by focusing on women’s rights, and as their membership has grown, they are now training young activists to become local peace builders, challenging violence, extremism and fundamentalism. Like girls’ groups and action advocacy in other countries they are using cell phones to connect, advocate and share information on their location and circumstances in order to protect each other, and they are using portable spaces to meet and keep safe from male violence.
Of course, supporting girls to claim their rights, to speak out and be bold, while keeping safe, is only one part of what needs attention. We also must do more to support men and boys to change their attitudes and behavior in order to see the level of change needed for women and girls to realize their human rights.
Recently I moderated a session with the filmmaker, Deeyah Khan, who created the film , Banaz: A Love Story’ about an honor killing in the UK. One of the many deeply affecting stories Deeyah shared with us was about the brother of Banaz, who had earlier tried to kill her sister. As he was trying to kill her, her sister cried out to him “where is your humanity?!” “What has happened to you? Why has it come to this?” Her brother fell down and wept and said that this was what was expected of him as a man, by their father, their uncle. Banaz’s sister fled and went into hiding and she stayed there permanently. Years later, from her place of hiding, she said her one regret was that she didn’t take her sister with her. Banaz was later killed by the men in the family.
Banaz was not only ‘owned’ by her husband, she was also ‘owned’ by all the men in her family and their extended male community who acted like a community watching party in reporting her moves and behavior wherever she went in public. Deeyah’s observation was that we are now rightly focused on doing more to protect women in terms of laws, prosecution, safe houses and education but what do the men do who are trapped in the expectations of their family too and are prisoners to their own concept of masculinity and what being a male entails?
Part of the answer to this lies in education. Check out this cool video made by seven young men who took a course on feminism and how it’s changed their thinking and how they act in the world: http://feministteacher.com/
In my book I talk about the concept of ‘I see me’ and models for men are critical to changing their attitudes and behavior. Interestingly in the New York Times this week there is an article on research from the University of Rochester showing that male judges who have daughters are more likely to vote in favor of women’s rights than ones with only sons. One of the researchers, Professor Sen, said “Things like having daughters can actually fundamentally change how people view the world, and this in turn affects how they decide cases.” Again, it’s that concept of men seeing their daughters in the eyes and lives of other women. That capacity fosters compassion and humanity.
At the Equality Rights Advocates 40th birthday commemoration this week, where Anita Hill was the keynote speaker, she talked of the electrifying impact of the civil rights movement on her life.
“I saw myself in those young people working in the civil rights movement. I saw myself in their age and actions – the sit ins, the freedom rides, the marches. That personalized the movement for me.”
When we can embrace philosopher Martin Buber’s concept of ‘I and Thou’ and see ourselves reflected in the thoughts, actions and experiences of others, that’s when we can heal the world.
When we can see ourselves as bold, creative and magical in what we can manifest, transformational change is possible.
It requires a mind shift as much as a body shift. A shift in power at any level begins with a shift in consciousness.
Here in Sausalito I’m making my own shifts and applying my own version of ‘I see me.’ I’m downsizing even further (‘is that possible?” asked one of my friends) and moving to a tiny boat set in a watery community of artists in the heart of Sausalito.
The woman who has owned it for 26 years was telling me that my neighbors were a maestro and his pianist wife and that they had two boats between them. As she was speaking there was the maestro rowing out to his other boat while another couple paddled out complete with their fearless dog on board (spot him in the pic).
My new boat abode is called Sunrise and so expect future Letters from Sunrise as I break open to a new community and shift consciously to openness, joy, adventure and possibility. Imagine this: pelicans passing close to my bed, seals splashing at the hull, a sky smashed with stars and a boat so aptly named to embrace the rosy dawn of a new day. I see me.
Jane Sloane
San Francisco