Build a girl leader

At Girl Determined we like to make a big deal about International Day of the Girl (October 11). This year we dedicated almost an entire season to it!  In fostering a movement of adolescent girls across the country, we know that girls need more opportunities to meet girls from different communities and backgrounds in a supportive and collaborative environment. 

For the past few months, our staff have been working tirelessly to organize over a dozen regional-hub Forums for girls.  Having secured a small project grant to support these gatherings, every girl currently enrolled in our weekly leadership circles — over 3,000 girls from 70 different communities — has had the chance to attend a forum where she can meet with other girls in her region and discuss the specific barriers they face in achieving their potential. 

The structure of the Forums is based on consensus-building.  The day’s discussions and activities revolve around a set of wider issues, based on what we already know about the situations of girls in different areas and the concerns girls have expressed to us historically.  In small groups, girls work through these various barriers — depicted on fun sets of illustrated cards — to identify which areas of concern apply most directly to their lives, while articulating specific examples where they have encountered barriers, been discriminated against, or felt unheard.  So far, we have heard from girls in Kachin State, Shan State, Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region, and Yangon Region (Tanintharyi Region forums will occur in the next week), and their highest-priority issues relate to the following issues:

• access to free, high-quality education for primary and secondary school
• access to clean toilet facilities, where they can manage my own personal hygiene privately and with dignity
• comfort and safety to go around their community at any time
• able to openly celebrate and practice their own ethnicity and religious beliefs

Following the regional Forums, in late November, we will hold an inaugural Girls’ National Conference. This conference will bring girls’ voices and experiences to the fore and encourage girls to act as change-makers in regional and national governance.  Two peer-selected delegates from each project community will assemble in the ancient capital of Mandalay for the conference.  Each girl spokesperson will represent her unique community, and join a larger discussion with other girls facing different issues.  They will hear from one another, learn about civic action on different levels, and draft a joint-letter to parliament expressing the concise needs of girls nation-wide with a clear policy request.  The conference will not only be an unforgettable experience for girls to see the similarities and differences between girls from different areas, but they will also be taking issues into their own hands by learning how to express their needs in a structured way and demanding accountability by those in power.  This will be a monumental event for girls and for Myanmar in moving forward to a more peaceful and equitable future.

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In addition to these exciting developments, our weekly Colorful Girls Circles and Sports programs have been running, new rounds of data collection are in the works to help us identify and reach the ‘most hard to reach’ girls, and we are expecting the next issue of our “Pollinator” magazine to be published before the year’s end.

Please stay tuned for announcements related to our year-end fundraising campaigns and the outcomes of the first-ever Myanmar Girls’ National Conference.  And as always, we thank you for reading and for your incredible support for the advancement of girls!

Links:

• "Unstoppable: Support Girls' Leadership" by Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro