By Devon White
Fast Tube by CasperThe Girl Effect is a global project that aims to raise awareness about the 600 million adolescent girls living in poverty in the developing world. Their goal is to advocate for health care, educational opportunities and safe environments for twelve-year-old girls. Making these changes can have a big impact on the lives of girls, their communities, and the world.
Changing the health care these girls receive, as well as providing education that would allow them to go on to get a stable job and making sure that they are in a safe environment to do so can help them avoid the risks of illiteracy, marrying too young, premature pregnancy, prostitution, and contracting HIV all of which can leave them in the same poverty as generations before them and to continue the cycle. This initiative is trying to help start a different cycle from generation to generation: from girl to girl.
A lot of the data that The Girl Effect bases their ideas on comes from Girls Count, a research initiative that is a part of The Coalition for Adolescent Girls. Girls Count “provides some of the first critical research specifically focused on adolescent girls in the developing world. It demonstrates how providing support to girls age 10-18 dramatically improves their lives – and also results in significant benefits for society as a whole.”
Both The Girl Effect and Girls Count are trying to take the information to the next level by providing toolkits for policy makers, NGOs, businesses, and even individuals that can help implement the change and recommending a global action agenda to improve the quality of life for young girls around the world. They are trying to inspire a revolution in how people view poverty and to adjust the way we go about changing the lives of the millions of girls affected by it.
If you’re looking for a cause that asks you to be the active voice of change for millions of underrepresented girls, The Girl Effect just may be the project for you.
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