Girls Learning to Help Girls Learning to Help Themselves.

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It seems that this is the year of the Girl. This blog has written on issues related to Millennium Development Goal No. 3 Gender Equity and especially on programs focused on the younger set through the Girl Effect programs.

• The Girl Effect

• Talking about the Girl Effect at Davos on YouTube

• Change Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Investing in the Girl Effect

The idea is to intervene early to provide a sense of empowerment in young females so that they can make a difference in their societies when they grow up. Even with the younger set their are two sides, those who have and those who don't. The first program looks at those who have and endeavors to instill in them a sense of responsibility for girls leaving in circumstances far less fortunate.

Robin Marty of Care2 writing on Women's Rights wrote on the United Nations decision to Girl Up!

Today, the United Nations has taken another step to address these issues particular to girls across the globe with the launch of GirlUp, a campaign that "gives American girls the opportunity to channel their energy and compassion to raise awareness and funds for programs of the United Nations that help some of the world’s hardest-to-reach adolescent girls." According to the campaign's website, "girls have the opportunity to become educated, healthy, safe, counted, and positioned to be the next generation of leaders."

• Homepage | GirlUp | United Nations Foundation | Uniting Girls to Change the World

  Diigo Tags: girlup, United Nations, mdgs

from Diigo. The rest of Make Noise for MDGs group favorite links are here.

The second program, introduced by Emily V. also of Care2 and part of the ThePetitionSite Team, is concerned with girls in developing countries. Emily is asking us to tell Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to use Bright Future as a model to end violence against women worldwide »

I did with the following message:

Bright Future gives women a fighting chance. It provides education and health checks for young girls and protects them from violence.

Bright Future is only one of many programs and projects in existence but none of them will have any impact if our governments do not take full responsibility of ensuring that these programs are supported. The United Nations is the best organization to push this agenda on a global scale as it is concurrently pushing for the implementation of Millennium Development Goal 3. Gender Equity and because girls are far less likely to be educated as compared with boys, with Millennium Development Goal 2. Universal Education

As of the time of posting this they were at 15,513 signatures! I put in my two cents taking the usual slacktivistic tactic of using the prepared online statement and throwing something related to the Millennium Development Goals. Those looking for a more hands on approach in the future should consider GirlUp as a place for future leaders.

Senator Boxer and the International Violence Against Women Act ( S. 2982)

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Lisa Ledoux, Internet Marketing Manager for Plan USA tells us that One in three girls will be assaulted in their lifetimes.

This blog has reported a number of times that Girls are at increased risk for abuse, trafficking, and violence at school.

Congress is still considering The International Violence Against Women Act (H.R. 4594, S. 2982), which seeks to define a strategic foreign policy approach to combating and responding to violence against women and girls. Persistence in these matters pays off and I urged our Congressional leaders to support the International Violence Against Women Act

The International Violence Against Women Act will help Plan and other organizations reach out to girls even more effectively by:

• Addressing violence against women and girls comprehensively, by supporting health, legal, economic, social, and humanitarian assistance sectors and incorporating violence prevention and response best practices into these programs;
• Helping to alleviate poverty and increasing the effectiveness of foreign assistance programs by ensuring they meet the needs of both women and men; and
• Supporting survivors, holding perpetrators accountable, and preventing violence.

My efforts resulted in a response from Senator Boxer on S.2982

Dear Mr. Dowling:

Thank you for writing to me to express your support for S.2982, the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA). I appreciate hearing from you, and I agree with you.

I was proud to join with Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in introducing S.2982, which gives the United States government the tools to make international violence against women and girls a top diplomatic priority of the United States. Every day, too many women and girls across the globe endure horrific acts of violence in their homes and communities. Women are disfigured by acid, beaten, and even killed in the name of "honor" by their families.

To achieve real and sustainable results in combating violence against women and to ensure that women have opportunities to live full and productive lives, the United States must take a more bold approach. That is why this bill requires the State Department to develop a comprehensive five-year strategy to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls internationally.

S.2982 has been referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which I am a member. Rest assured, I will continue working to ensure that this critical legislation is passed by Congress and signed into law.

Again, thank you for writing to me. Please feel free to contact me again about this or any other issue of concern to you.

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

You can also tell your Congressional leaders to take a stand for women and girls

RelatedPosts

• Getting Down to Basics and Helping Where We Can

• Support Women and Girls around the Globe!

International Women's Day and Millennium Development Goal 3 Perfect Match

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What the Millennium Development Goal No. 3 Gender Equity is trying to achieve is made manifest in the celebration of International Women's Day. This post is in support of the International Women's Day online event being sponsored by BloggersUnite member BlogCatalog.

International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

The Internet provides numerous ways of getting involved. This is what I heard from fellow ONE Member Rochelle Gibbs providing means of social collaboration and engagement.

I joined ONE because I'm a mom. I saw what other mothers go through in developing countries, the difficult decisions they have to make and their incredible strength. I could only imagine how I'd feel in one of their places.

ONE is starting a new initiative called "Women ONE2ONE", and it's all about women taking action and connecting with each other to fight poverty. With every voice we add, we can help send another young girl to school, help an HIV-positive expecting mother keep from passing the virus on to her baby, and help another woman find the courage to speak out against oppression and corruption.

I'm asking you. Raise your voice today for a woman who can't.

One million women's voices. Imagine what we can get done.

Issues of economic sustainability impact women across the globe as demonstrated by this talk from the World Economic Forum India Economic Summit - New Delhi, India demonstrates.

Investing in Girls, Investing in Development means that empowering girls means breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty and helping to build sustainable economies.

The question is, "What needs to be done by business and government to ensure that girls are placed at the forefront of the regional development agenda?"

The folks at Care2.com share part of the answer and that is by Reaching Millions of Girls in the Developing World.

The UN Foundation and the Nike Foundation provided seed funding for a UN project to end child marriage in the Amhara region. The project, called Berhane Hewan, convenes community discussions, and girls’ clubs where girls get access to education, health and HIV education, and are encouraged to delay marriage. Families who keep their daughters in school and in the program are rewarded with an economic incentive that will contribute to the long-term well-being of the family, such as a sheep.

Kathy Calvin CEO of the UN Foundation, a public charity that connects people, ideas, and resources to the UN to solve global problems.

These are just some of the ways of getting involved.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Can India Reap Its Demographic Dividend? (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)
• Why we still need to mark International Women's Day (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• International Women's Day Vote (fridge.ubuntu.com)
• TODAY Women mark International Women's Day in Toronto (newswire.ca)

3rd of 8 days 8 Goals Personal Stories behind the Millennium Development Goals

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This captivating video focuses on the personal stories and struggles around achieving the United Nations Millennium Campaign - Goal 3 - Gender Equity

Seems to me that the Girl Effect posts are the best done on this effort by this blog.

Related Posts:

• Talking about the Girl Effect at Davos on YouTube

• Change Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Investing in the Girl Effect

• The Girl Effect

Talking about the Girl Effect at Davos on YouTube

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The effect of the Girl Effect at Davos

I did a post at my other blog on using YouTube as a social media tool. One of the most recent examples is Youtube's own coverage of the Davos Economic Forum. Though nothing all that positive came out of the forum as a whole there were a number of videos on a subject close to this blog - The Girl Effect.

Ann Veneman talks about the Girl Effect at Davos

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala talks about the Girl Effect at Davos

Professor Muhammad Yunus responds to the Girl Effect

These and more videos can be found here at Playlist: The Girl Effect

Related posts:

• Change Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Investing in the Girl Effect
• Social responsibility, seeking the good
• The Girl Effect
• Accession of African Activists. A DIY approach to the MDGs

From my other blog:

• Micro-Loans Snake Oil Panacea Or Pathway To New Economic Paradigms
• Unplanned Obsolescence

FAO not Schwartz part 2- Opposing Pathways to Ending World Hunger and Malnutrition

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My last post dealt with the global efforts of the FAO to address the global challenge of world hunger and malnutrition. I took my usual public policy wonk approach that the organizational infrastructure and business-like strategy were as important as social relevancy and moral inspiration. The ability of the FAO to conduct evaluations of past activities at an in depth level was as important as its laudable intention to be more proactive in its future endeavors.

There is another level of discussion that goes beyond the efforts of the FAO and United Nation's efforts to the basic philosophy behind the best means of addressing these problems. My inspiration once again comes from the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA group forums. How we see the problem will influence how we see any potential solutions. One of group's members used a famous bet to frame the debate.

The ongoing debate centers around a bet between Noble Prize winning scientist Paul Ehrlich and the famous American economist Julian Simon. The metric of the bet was the price that five metals reached on the Chicago Stock Exchange in the following decade. Ehrlich claimed that population growth would raise the demand and the price of metals. The metal lost value, and Ehrlich lost that particular bet.

Paul Ehrlich wrote the controversial best-seller the Population Bomb in 1968 which made projections about the catastrophic consequences of population explosion. Ehrlich was trained as an entomologist and has an affinity for systems and seeing the big picture. Ehrlich follows in the tradition of English philosopher Thomas Malthus, who in the eighteenth century posited "his hypothesis that (unchecked) population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence" creating a Maltusian catastrophe. His "Essay on the Principle of Population" also influenced Darwin's theories.

Losing that particular wager did not stop the debate, the question is whether Ehrilich's work on population is still relevant. Taking the affirmative, the blog Yale Environment 360 discusses the matter in The Population Bomb: Has It Been Defused?

The Ehrlichs are sometimes ridiculed because Paul’s original book predicted hundreds of millions of deaths from famine in the 1980s, when we were bailed out by the Green Revolution. But they are right to question the new orthodoxy that technological fixes will always save the day. For myself, I fear that when the Wall Street Journal talks about a revival of Malthusian fears, it reflects a tendency to excuse those guilty of overconsumption, while instead blaming the poor for their poverty and our planetary predicament.

Fred Pearce
Environment consultant for New Scientist magazine

Others are still supportive of Simon, for example Jeffery Goldberg's article in the Atlantic, The Population Bomb That Bombed.

Ehrlich is now leading the Center for Conservation Biology research at Stanford University in California, and still holds to his central thesis: the earth is nearing its limit of sustainability of human life. Ehrlich's current work was featured in Wired Magazine back in March of this year, Population Bomb Author Tackles Cultural Evolution.

My own personal view is an attempt to find a middle path that incorporates both perspectives. Defining the problem as Ehrlich does, but recognizing the viability of Simon's arguments. This blog continues to be against an unfettered free market approach to economics and at the same time support social entrepreneurial efforts incorporating effective business discipline. Ehrlich proposes a Fix For Next Extinction: Educate Women. Where I come somewhat closer to siding with Simon is in applying the solutions. Finding that middle path, however, continues to be an ongoing debate with myself.

Related Posts -

FAO not Schwartz part 1 - Global Plan of Action Addresses a Global Challenge Hunger

FAO not Schwartz part 3 - A World Tragedy Too Long

Change Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Investing in the Girl Effect

Social responsibility,seeking the good

Change Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Investing in the Girl Effect

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The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre featured an article back on 10/21/08 on the World Bank Launches Private-Public Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls

The World Bank joined governments and the private sector today to launch the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) to promote the economic empowerment of adolescent girls in poor and post-conflict countries...The AGI is being piloted in Liberia through a partnership between the Bank, the Nike Foundation...It will be expanded in the coming year to include Afghanistan, Nepal, Rwanda, South Sudan......Every global company should invest in the girl effect. Economists have demonstrated that it is the best possible return on investment, said Mark Parker, President and CEO of Nike...

Somebody else who was impressed with this campaign was Nathaniel Whittemore. He discusses the power of good design in social ventures and Social Entrepreneurship at Change.org and he was surprised by the video's upbeat tone:

1. How refreshing that the viral nonprofit video of the last few years doesn't have a single picture of war, poverty, disease and death, and its message fundamentally comes down to "the solution may not be simple, but the start of the solution is."

The approach has not, however, been without controversy.

Social responsibility,seeking the good

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This blog has expressed a greater affinity with "best" business practices than might be expected by many of a site dedicated to as progressive of a cause as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. A growing belief that governments, at all levels, are not able to innovate quickly and deeply enough has also led to a greater affinity with libertarian concepts, at least on a tactical level. The main mission remains, regardless of frustrations with old ways to dealing with the world's problems, progressive. Progressive though is a loaded word and there will be a large contingency that will take issue with my claiming that label if for no other reason than I claim that a site that supports free enterprise can be progressive.

This blog has posted on the position that big business should and can make ethical investments. Trouble is that we still worry, and arguably need to, when they do.

An earlier post on the Girl Effect revealed an intense discussion between -Erin Erlenborn of ONE, two commenters who expressed concern over the involvement of Nike, and a Nike representative.

On another blog, I argued for taking lessons from some of the management practices of the DuPont Company. The post also reveals again my bias towards MIT as a change-agent organization. But the PERI - Political Economy Research Institute lists DuPont on its Toxic 100 Table, raising the question whether DuPont is making a valid effort in walking the walk and not just talking.

Id21 takes a balanced view on ensuring big business social responsibility.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a badge of respectability for major companies. But voluntary initiatives to promote socially responsible business practices can never replace protective legislation. Nevertheless, financial incentives would increase their effectiveness and improved inspectorates could encourage small and medium sized firms to improve their labour practices.

So it seems that both the carrot and the stick are needed in working to get businesses to support the Millennium Development Goals.

diigo tags: peri, politics, economics, research, sustainability

The Girl Effect

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Drew Meyers is a blogger who provides Personal Insights on Web 2.0, Blogging, and Business for his readers. He also writes for MyKRO.org whose mission is to:

Inspire the world's elite minority to actively empower the world's underprivileged majority. Through an online community, encourage information flow that promotes increased awareness and knowledge of microfinance as a poverty-fighting tool.

Dave provides a particular inspiring video The Girl Effect in both the blogs he writes for.

The video is via ONE.org.

The “Girl Effect” is the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society. Decades of research shows that when women have access to more resources, they put their money towards making sure their children have better nutrition, education and health care.