Girls are active, engaged and powerful individuals who best understand the realities of their lives. Your Power to Girls commitment can support girls’ rights and accelerate progress towards ending child marriage, by putting girls and young people at the centre of finding solutions and shaping their futures.
Governments, civil society organisations and other stakeholders should:
- Invest in programmes that build the life skills and confidence of girls, including through girls’ clubs, access to comprehensive sexuality education and safe spaces for girls. This will ensure that girls can shape their futures and confidently navigate social norms and other barriers.
- Integrate girls into the design and development of programmes that aim to influence their lives, as they know best what their needs are, the barriers they face and the support they require from schools, families, parents, communities and leaders. This will ensure that programmes are relevant, responsive to the lived experience of girls, feasible and applicable, effective, sustainable and safe.
- Profile girls and young people in programmes, media and communications to create positive role models and positively contribute to how they are seen in the community, and invite role models to act as mentors in their communities. This will inspire others to follow alternatives to traditional roles and realise they can defy social norms and still thrive.
These recommendations come from Girls Not Brides Decade of Progress report. This is a milestone paper marking our tenth anniversary which brings together insights we have gained and steps we must all take to harness our collective energy and accelerate change over the next decade.