‘Shrushti’ means ‘world’. It’s the name of an unknown young Indian girl. Is there any other kind? Good question, but the world has come to hear of our little Shrushti thanks to The Girl Tree project. It highlights the dreams of 250 peer-picked girls from seven countries who represent 25 million others like them, all living in poverty. Shrushti’s is to ‘‘start a free karate training centre for girls so that they can always walk without fear’’. It hung on a small scroll from a steel tree, inspired by the Japanese Wishing Tree – just like our own Kalpataru, or indeed the real-life peepuls tied with the threads of desire and desperation.
The Girl Tree with its shimmering little danglers was a major attraction at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre during the Women Deliver conference in May. The main thrust of this dynamo advocacy group is to bring reproductive health to the 222 million women and young girls who don’t have access to these life-saving and poverty-reducing services. As its founder, Jill Sheffield, says, “Investing in girls and women is not just the right thing to do, it’s also the smart thing.” The plenaries reminded the 5,000 delegates of the grim fact that, “If we don’t catch them as girls, we may not be able to help them as women.”
Maria Eitel started the Nike Foundation and its ‘Girl Effect’ on the singular belief that adolescent girls living in poverty are uniquely positioned to end poverty. At Kuala Lumpur she pointed out that, “It’s a dangerous misconception that this group is included when we plan services of health or economic empowerment.” After age 5, she becomes ‘invisible’, resurfacing on the radar only when she is a teenaged bride – or unwed mother. As Eitel added, “Yet, between 9 and 19, she takes the right or wrong direction. We don’t have the data, so we don’t know how unique her experience is. We focus on problems and challenges, but not on the opportunities. If we don’t obsess about girls, they simply won’t be counted.”
It’s a good thing that so many ‘glocal’ agencies are obsessing – because there are 600 million opportunities out there to change the grimmest statistics of the developing world. The likes of Bill and Melinda Gates weigh in with their powerful fortunes; their physical presence in remote centres of need gets to the parts that mere chequebooks can’t reach. Melinda Gates has, in fact, become the most visible face of family planning and the larger implications of reproductive health, even in the insalubrious hamlets of India and Africa. The message going out to policymakers is that they have to roll back the age at which they reach out to women.
All the stories of how an educated mother changes the health, nutrition and economic status of the entire family – with its ripple effect on community, state and country – simply ignore the fact that these are girls before they are mothers. More important, that they shouldn’t become mothers when they are still girls. Yet this overlooked group is the tipping point.
Whole societies can change if we ensure that their bodies are not violated, that pregnancy doesn’t force them out of school, that they enter womanhood healthy enough to produce healthy children at the right time. Or that they are vaccinated against HPV, the human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer, the only cancer which can be prevented by immunising girls before they become sexually active.
Yet, everything that parents, religious leaders – and busybodies – do in the name of ‘protection’ actually makes young girls more vulnerable. For example, ‘safeguarding’ them from messages of sexuality and sexual health. It also takes away their freedoms and blocks the way to empowering opportunities. So, savvy advocacy groups use the tested strategy of turning the problem into a part of the solution. When talking to obstructive imams in the Islamic countries of Asia and Africa, they personalise the message, make them realise that “this is good for my wife, my sisters, my daughters and also for my sons”. Similarly, in Catholic countries, they don’t talk of ‘population control’ but of ‘responsible parenthood’, a value the Church is big on.
Among the global best practices outlined by Melinda for this reporter, one was that “If we talk to them in the right way, they send out the message in the right way.” Another is to go where the target group congregates – and is comfortable. Take the message to the hangout places for adolescents; create a backdoor to the clinic because it’s too ‘uncool’ for teens to enter openly. Or provide an ‘app’ which directs them to the right service.
Another impressive online pathway is ‘It Takes Two’, with its scroll-line, ‘‘It takes two to talk about sex, to get pregnant, to plan for the future to change the world.’’ It uses ‘gamification’, and has roped in the likes of Rihanna and Pearl Jam to donate to its ‘Two Tickets’ campaign. You can win them by taking part in online contests such as designing a condom wrapper. As its ebullient founder, Hugh Evans, pointed out, ‘‘It could feature your own face – or that of your father.’’
Understanding the needs of the young, especially girls, allowing them to be heard, reaching out in their language – if these are used effectively they can upgrade the developing world.
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