USAID Bangladesh, Women and Girls Lead Global, Department of Women and Gender Studies, Dhaka University and over 150 students from various social science departments within the university celebrated International Youth Day on August 12, 2015 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

When a 10 year-old girl in Haryana, India can see that her community is in need of more male heroes to protect the safety, livelihood and rights of women and girls, something must be done.
In October, “The Hero Project” – a campaign that aims to prevent gender-based violence in India by challenging harmful gender stereotypes – launched the #ChangetheStory Contest. Hundreds of rural communities in Pune and Beed and slum communities in Bombay and Delhi watched a series of three documentaries about various forms of violence against women, shared their thoughts about them in lively conversations, and were then challenged to develop their own solutions to gender-based violence. In January, four of the 190 participating communities were awarded $1000 in seed money to implement their projects. Among the winning ideas: a strategy for tackling the drug abuse that is provoking violence in boys and men, and a plan to develop a playground reserved for girls.

The “Share Films… Share Change” challenge was presented to a young group in Jordan: produce a short film that tells a story about the gender discrimination in your community. Young Jordanians participating in the Women and Girls Lead Global campaign were asked to combine knowledge they had acquired from the campaign’s documentary film screening with phenomena they’ve personally experienced.