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The Girl Effect

Submitted by jlevy on January 31, 2012 - 11:46am
The Girl Effect

The Girl Effect is a movement that focuses on advocacy from those who champion girls worldwide by making use of creative and social media. It is devoted to the idea that the empowerment of girls is the key to significant social and economic change in developing countries. Its signature video promotes the education of girls, especially between ages 12 and 18, when they are often deprived of that opportunity, as a way to protect girls from HIV, early marriage, and pregnancy and to offer an entrance to work that will keep them and their children from economic poverty.

Communication Strategies: 

All the creative communication tools such as interactive website, videos, social media, media kit, fact sheet, poster, photos, and logos can be downloaded for free at the website. The website itself is highly interactive, intending to engage visitors with, for example, a pop up poll that asks your opinion before directing you to the video and other resources on the site.

 

The site includes interviews with girls from Bangladesh, India, and Ethiopia. It advocates, through posters, for: birth registration of girls; education; sexual and reproductive health information and care; an entrance to the employment market, as well as financial literacy training; equal development investment in girls; help for girls to write, speak up, lobby, and work to enforce good laws and change discriminatory policies; and annual "girl report cards" from every country to track how girls are faring. The site provides, among a number of documents: a downloadable "Girl Effect" Fact Sheet; a "Girl Effect" Toolkit; an advocacy booklet describing what funders, policymakers, businesses, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can do to "unleash the girl effect"; a paper on economic strategies, "Smarter Economics: Investing in Girls"; and four Coalition for Adolescent Girls research documents, each of which explores a dimension of girls' lives and contains an agenda for change.

 

The site provides links to the following girl-supporting campaigns:

  • Girl Up (United Nations Fund - UNF)
  •  The Power of Girls (Care & Girl Scouts)
  • Because I am a Girl (Plan)
  • Girls Without Voices (Plan)
  • I Have a Voice (Plan)
Development Issues: 

Women, Youth, Gender, HIV, Education.

Key Points: 

“When a girl has the right tools in place, a chance to use her voice and systems set up to work for her, she will transform the lives of everyone around her”, according to the website introduction. Studies show that when you improve a girl’s life, you improve the lives of her brothers, sisters, parents, and beyond. Her individual effect will multiply with the 600 million girls in the developing world to make a huge impact. Using social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), the movement now (January 2012) has more than 278,933 people “like” on Facebook; 22,247 followers on Twitter and more than 3 million times for the video being viewed on YouTube.

Partner Text: 

This initiative was created by the Nike Foundation in collaboration with key partners such as the United Nations Foundation and the Coalition for Adolescent Girls and financially supported by the NoVo Foundation and Nike Inc.

Contact Information: 
Girl Effect
See video
Related Summaries: 
The Girl Effect: What Do Boys Have to Do with It?
Source: 

Email from Huyen Tran Dieu to The Communication Initiative on January 30 2012. Image credit: Mark Darrough

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