The Get #GirlConnected screening and panel discussion on gender biases was truly a global conversation. Audience members hailed from every corner of the globe: Haiti, India, Kenya, Israel, Guatemala, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, and major cities around the US. Classrooms in Colorado and Virginia, domestic non-profit organizations working with at-risk youth and victims of sexual exploitation, […]
Women and Girls Lead Global is excited to announce our new blog series, Faces of Change. The Faces of Change campaign is a window into the lives of the community members we have worked with on the ground, who work to promote gender equality. During our five years reducing gender-based violence in India and Jordan; improving […]
India has the largest number of child brides in the world. Although child marriage has been illegal in the country for decades, the tradition runs rampant. UNICEF defines child marriage as marriage before the age of 18 and “a fundamental violation of human rights.” According to the 2016 UNICEF report, over 3 million girls in India […]
Thank you for an empowering #GirlConnected screening and panel! We are inspired by our thoughtful conversation on how gender stereotypes constrain girls’ and women’s potential, and how we as a global community can support girls to transcend them. If you didn’t get the chance to watch the Girl Connected film it is available for free online, along with the Girl Connected […]
In April 2017, Arif Hossain stepped in to stop Eti Khatun from becoming a 13-year-old bride. As a WGLG Best School for Girls facilitator, he has been supporting students at the Puiya High School to prevent child marriage and school drop-outs by making the school more girl-friendly. However, when Arif’s 23-year-old friend Rayhan told him […]
In this blog series, Koen shares some of his experiences from the making of Girl Connected. In his visit to Bangladesh, Koen meets Latifa, a fourteen-year-old anti child marriage activist, driven by her own narrow escape from the fate of a child bride. Koen shares, “When you hear Latifa argue with the adults, you’d think she was 18… Then as she walks on to the next village, a duck crosses her path. She starts chasing it with a friend, giggling their way through the high grass. You look at her then and she’s twelve years old again, living the moments she missed when she went into hiding, fearing for her destiny.”
Josi, Michelle, Ghazal, Latifa, and Ayesha live thousands of miles apart, but the five young women are connected by a single mission: improving the lives of other girls in their communities. In Women and Girls Lead Global’s new film made by Koen Suidgeest, Girl Connected, we meet young women from Peru, Kenya, Jordan, Bangladesh and […]
The Hero Academy is a nine-week course for young men that uses a film-based curriculum to cultivate empathy and respect for women and girls. One of the Hero Academy’s key activities is community mapping. Inspired by a community mapping exercise in a film called Revolutionary Optimists, the activity challenges participants to interview women and girls […]
Girl Connected captures complex and inspiring stories of girls in five countries taking on the enormous challenge of tackling issues like child marriage, gender-based violence, reproductive health rights, and the many forms of discrimination girls face all over the world – all while balancing their lives as teenage girls. The film launched globally on our […]
This 16 Days of Activism, “Girl Connected” Ayesha Noor encourages girls to take up self defense lessons and fight GBV. How will you fight for girls’ rights?