Tag: The Girl Effect

Posted in Essay, Jamie Dedes

THE GIRL EFFECT: An Amazing Multifaceted Global Effort to Fight Poverty

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

THE GIRL EFFECT:

An Amazing Multifaced Global Effort

by

Jamie Dedes

The Prospective on Cancer series will resume tomorrow. Today we break for the October 4 kick-off of The Girl Effect Blogging Campaign. 

Last year when I participated in this blogging event, I focused on the plight of the girls. This year my focus is on the The Girl Effectproject. It is a stunning multifaceted effort that seeks to end poverty through understanding, documenting, and promoting the value, needs, and priorities of girls in developing countries. It forms a untied global collaboration of development partners for research and program design and delivery. It needs our support, not just as bloggers and writers, but also as workers, volunteers, and donors.

This project might sound to some like an effort with a bias, but it is really an effort to improve the social and economic fabric of families and communities by opening educational and economic opportunities to girls aged ten to twenty-four. Efforts are made toward removing barriers to family and economic stability, barriers like early pregnancy, school dropout, and HIV/AIDS. Girls are ultimately the backbone of their families and communities reinvesting ninety percent of what they earn in their families as opposed to boys’ reinvestment of sixty percent.

The studies that the development community have implemented and are sharing among partner agencies provide information we haven’t ever had before on girls in this age group in the developing nations. Their studies conclude with action items for governments and policy makers. Under the banner of The Girl Effect, the global community is united in assessing the cost to individuals, families, communities, and countries when girls live in poverty, are bared from education and proper health care, and suffer abuse.

The Girl Effect seeks support for efforts that address some things those of us in the developed nations take for granted: like being counted.  When a child has no birth certificate and is not counted in any census, she has no identity and there is no way of knowing if programs that are in place are reaching her and helping her.

The Girl Effect partners seek to:

  • acquire funding for programs and to track program outcomes;
  • support, encourage, and provide opportunities for complete primary education and for secondary education;
  • provide health care, wellness programs, and HIV/AIDS prevention programs;
  • organize health-care delivery systems that are effective in reaching this demographic;
  • provide economic empowerment for earning, saving, and building assets;
  • ensure legislation that supports women’s rights;
  • empower girls to advocate for themselves; and,
  • mobilize nations, communities, and families, men and boys, to support the efforts of girls to protect and educate themselves and improve their lives and those of their families.

The programs that are offered by partners include education, legal help, micro-loans, and health care. Donations may be made through Global Giving.

© 2011, Jamie Dedes, all rights reserved. Posting or printing permitted by request only.

Photo credit ~ Girl Effect photo courtesy of Brent Stirton/Getty Images.

Video uploaded to YouTube by .

Posted in Uncategorized

AN INVITATION: The Girl Effect Blogging Campaign

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

2011 GIRL EFFECT BLOGGING CAMPAIGN: THE POSTS!

“The Girl Effect” is a powerful idea: by investing in girls in the developing world, we make an incredibly effective investment in eradicating poverty, creating thriving communities, and slowing the spread of AIDS.

[In the work of participating bloggers], you’ll find reflections about The Girl Effect . Usually, we specialize in writing about subjects ranging from business to creativity, but we invite many to take a day to write about this. Neither the participating bloggers or I (Tara Sophia Mohr) are affiliated with any organization. We are passionate about this cause.

Join the campaign! Write about The Girl Effect at your blog this week, October 4-11, 2011!

For details on writing your own post for the campaign, click here.”  [Tara Sophia Mohr/Wise Living]

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Last year I participated in this campaign. I didn’t know about the effort in a timely enough fashion to share information and an invitation. I hope this year some of you will join the effort. I look forward to reading what you write . . . This is not about leaving boys out, by the way. Boys benefit. You have to view the video to understand why girls are specifically targeted for this.

Here is what I posted last year:

I AM THE ANSWER

Photograph courtesy of Lee Wag, Public Domain Pictures.net.

As the women go, so goes the world. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, LI, NY who raised and educated me.

FOR THE GIRLS

FOR CARE‘S INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S DAY

FOR EVERY MOTHER’S CHILD

by

Jamie Dedes

They come like thistle and thorn,

and write their rage upon my body.

They come like locusts and

feed on the fields of my soul.

Like an angry storm, they drown me.

Like the desert sands, they suffocate me.

They see me, a little person of

no consequence … a girl,

Just a trinket, a toy, a receptacle,

something to sell, buy, and trade.

But hear me, I am the answer.

I am the calm after the storm.

I am the antidote to

stone hearts and desiccated souls.

I am the future and the past.

I am the hope, the dream, the reality.

I am authentic.

I am human.

I am the answer.

Poem by Jamie Dedes, copyright 2010, 2011, all rights reserved.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

INTO THE BARDO

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