Girl Child Empowerment

There is a beautiful saying that when you empower a girl, everyone benefits

Discrimination has no place in the 21st century, and every girl has the right to go to school, stay safe from violence, access health services, and fully participate socially in her community. Secondly empowered girls mean healthier families. When girls are educated, healthy, and empowered, families are healthier.

 Also, girls who are educated, healthy and free can transform their communities and pass on the benefits to their children, and to their children’s children.

Here are five reasons why empowering adolescent girls matters to all of us at Faithflows.

1. It’s her right.

Fundamentally, it is her right as a human to enjoy the same benefits as any other gender. Discrimination has no place in the 21st century, and every girl has the right to go to school, stay safe from violence, access health services, and fully participate in her community.

2. Empowered girls mean healthier families:

   When girls are educated, healthy, and empowered, families are healthier. According to UNESCO, 2.1 million children under age 5 were saved between 1990 and 2009 because of improvements in girls’ education. 

   3. Empowered girls are key to breaking the cycle of poverty for families around the world.

   Research from the Brookings Institution has found that every additional year of school increases a girls’ eventual wages by an average of 12% – earnings she invests back into her family. Empowered, educated girls have healthier, better educated children and higher wages – helping to break the cycle of poverty.

   4. Empowered girls strengthen economies.

   According to a new Brookings report, “Increasing the number of women completing secondary education by just 1 percent could increase a country’s economic growth by 0.3 percent.” Additionally, a report just released by the McKinsey Global Institute found that if women’s level of participation in the labor market was the same as men’s it would add up to $28 trillion to annual global GDP in 2025.

   5. Did we mention it’s the right thing to do?

   Investing in girls is one of the smartest things we can do to promote a healthier, more prosperous world. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do. Every girl has the right to be in charge of her future and her fate, and we have the collective obligation to protect her rights and promote her wellbeing.

   Faithflows in keeping with her mission believes that every girl can take charge of her future if and when she receives all the necessary empowerment. Hence, her Girl Child Empowerment program focuses on addressing the challenges girls face as well as promoting girls’ empowerment and the fulfillment of their human rights. 

   One of the ways Faithflows empowers is by providing support to girls in some communities to ensure they have necessary sanitary materials they need to go through a healthy menstrual cycle. This is on the premise that the menace of period poverty has affected many women and girls. A burden for many African communities. Period poverty deprives girls the opportunity to receive quality learning during their menstrual period because they lack adequate sanitary materials.