Girl-centric strategies – tips from the experts
AmplifyChange is proud to support girl-centric organisations that uphold and uplift the rights of girls and young women in the Global South.
On International Day of the Girl Child 2020, we highlight some effective and boundary-breaking strategies that our grantees are currently implementing in their projects across the globe:
Ensure your project design incorporates girls and young women
Before you begin project implementation, you must spend time studying the context and analysing the issues that affect girls in their specific area and communities. It is essential to carry out community visits and community engagement sessions in order to do this. Girls often face many unique and gendered issues and ensuring cultural sensitivity to these issues is key during the design stage of your project.
Author: AfriYAN, Ghana.
During your initial baseline studies, it is important to collect data from female beneficiaries. Often, women and girls are left out of data collection making the data gender biased. By collecting data from women and girls, it is possible to obtain the direct information for needs assessments that can be utilised during project implementation.
Author: RedOrange Media & Communications, Bangladesh.
It is important to ensure early participation by girls and young females in the building and design of programmes. This ensures their ownership and commitment to the initiatives.
Author: Juzoor for Health and Social Development, Palestine.
Create space for girls’ voices
Invest your time and resources into creating spaces for rural girls to develop confidence in themselves to tell their stories and trust in us to listen to their stories. Being girl centric at TAWINA means incorporating girls’ voices at every stage of the project cycle. While this is often time consuming and at times, demands resources, it pays as it often leads to successful projects with long lasting impact.
Author: Teams Advancing Women in Agriculture (TAWINA), Malawi.
Listen to your girls! Make them believe they and their words matter. Do not miss any detail if they are quoting an incident or sharing a story or a concern. Their feedback is important for the project. A platform should be provided to the girls where they feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feedback without the fear of being judged on their views and concern.
Author: Nur Foundation, Pakistan.
It is important to claim our spaces and rights and no longer wait for hand-me-downs. The previous generation of feminists fixed a lot of wrongs, the future generation of girls will build on it to create a lot of rights – for all AFAB and intersections of class, gender, race, caste and geographies. We rise. Together.
Author: Boondh, India.
Encouraging girl leadership and ownership
Projects should be girl-led. Invest in strengthening the capacities of girls so that they can take the lead during project planning and implementation. Create opportunities and platforms of power for girls to engage duty bearers on rights issues.
Author: Women Against Violence and Exploitation in Society (WAVES-SL), Sierra Leone.
We realized that leadership capacity development that brings meaningful change should be the one that prompts creation of spaces for girls to exercise their leadership skills in the presence and with the support of community leaders and members. This does not only yield respect for and value in the girls, but it also ensures that the community pays attention to the needs and expectations of girls. Design your project in a way that it is inevitable for the communities to implement them without the leadership of girls.
Author: TAWINA, Malawi.
Women-led teams are important during the planning and implementation of a girl-centric program. Girls can connect more to female project staff as they are able to relate to them and empathise more, as well as understanding their concerns better due to similar gender experiences.
Author: Nur Foundation, Pakistan.
