A virtual festival celebrating Power To Girls

On 30 September 2021, we celebrated the launch of our Power to Girls campaign at an all-day virtual festival, featuring expert panels, creative workshops, music and conversations with activists dedicated to ending child marriage all around the world.

This was an important moment for us all. Over the last 10 years, we have made significant progress as a global movement to end child marriage, but much more needs to happen before child marriage becomes a thing of the past. Unless we accelerate progress, over 100 million girls will marry as children before 2030. The Power to Girls campaign - launched at our virtual festival – is an opportunity to raise our collective voice as a global community and demand action from decision-makers.

You can watch back all our sessions on our Power to Girls Virtual Festival webpage or check out the highlights below!

The rich and varied conversations of the day were captured in these beautiful illustrations by Luis Alberto García.

We were blown away by performances from Kenyan spoken word poet Dorphanage who has created work on his own personal experience of his mother who married as a child…

…. And  the songs performed by Mare Advertencia Lirika a passionate and talented  indigenous singer from Mexico

Speakers and activists kickstarted the campaign by making their own Power to Girls campaign commitments.

Do you support #PowerToGirls? Our Founder & Champion @MabelvanOranje has committed to building “magical matches” between key stakeholders in the movement to #endchildmarriage so that girls can be girls, and not brides.

Make your commitment today: https://t.co/XyxV7cmyaO pic.twitter.com/5SrOW9FXgR

— Girls Not Brides (@GirlsNotBrides) September 30, 2021

We are inspired by the artistic skills of the child marriage activists participating in our Creative workshop: Using arts for campaigning.

We were moved by the hundreds of supporters who turned up throughout the day to show their own passion and commitment to ending child marriage.

We've heard from @GirlsNotBrides members, young people, activists, allies, governments, performers and artists from around the world.

This is just the beginning! 📢

Make your #PowerToGirls commitment and be part of a multitude of voices calling for change.#PowerToGirls pic.twitter.com/RMSVQIVr1f

— Girls Not Brides (@GirlsNotBrides) September 30, 2021

This is only the beginning. Now we have launched Power to Girls, we want to work with you over the next six months to use this campaign to show decision-makers the importance of ending child marriage, and to get them to act now.

We want to amplify girls’ voices and create space for them to harness their individual power and realise their potential. We want to use our campaign to get decision-makers to act urgently to end child marriage, and to put policies, programmes and funding behind their commitments so that all girls have can choose if, when and whom to marry.

Find out how you can get involved in the Power to Girls campaign on the campaign webpage, and make a campaign commitment.