Investing in girls and opportunity
October 11 marks International Day of the Girl Child, with the theme of 2024 being Girls’ vision for the future, focusing on the need for urgent action and persistent hope, driven by the power of girls’ voices and vision for the future.
As the world deals with challenges of poverty, climate, and conflict, along with ongoing fights for human rights and gender equality, girls today are disproportionately affected. But despite this, girls globally are still growing up with vision, hope and voices that deserve to be heard.
Whenever Opportunity’s programs staff go into the field and ask the female business owners we support in Asia about their hopes and dreams for the future, their answers always are about their children. Whether it’s putting food on the table for them, saving for their schooling, or helping them walk in their entrepreneurial footsteps – for many of these women, every day is about investing in their girls.
WHY INVESTING IN GIRLS IS WORTH IT
Girls like Seema (aged 9, left) and Vibha (aged 11, right), who live in Bihar, India, where 36 million people live in poverty – that’s more than the total population of Australia, living in poverty in one state in India.
Both Seema and Vibha want to grow up, finish school and teach others when they graduate. With the help of a small loan, their mother Manti is growing a business and they’re able to stay in school, eat nutritious food and speak out about their dreams.
Today’s girls are the leaders of the future and will come up with many of the solutions to our world’s greatest challenges.
They’ll build businesses, teach others, provide health care, and look after their families in turn too.
HOW OPPORTUNITY’S PROGRAMS BENEFIT GIRLS GLOBALLY
While the majority of Opportunity’s programs involve partnerships with women – working through microfinance organisations to provide small loans, health training and finance and other impactful programs – our ultimate goal is to transform families and entire communities, which means girls play a vital role.
Some of our key programs which directly benefit girls include:
Empowering girls through the Shakti network
Through our local partner My Choices Foundation, who work closely with women and girls to help prevent domestic violence and human trafficking in India, we support a mentorship program for adolescent girls called Super Smart Shakti Network.
Shakti means ‘feminine strength and power’ and this group connects teenage girls together to cover various topics related to gender and patriarchy, healthy relationships, boundaries, domestic violence, self-love, and safety.
Community health education provided by Health Leaders trained by Opportunity’s local partners in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia provide crucial knowledge to women and girls about menstrual health and proper menstrual hygiene, as well as nutrition, reproductive and maternal and chld health, to improve community health in rural and remote areas where knowledge may be limited.
The health content is tailored for the local area, and taught by female Health Leaders from the communities themselves, who understand the cultural sensitivities and cultural taboos around certain health issues – including menstruation.
Keeping more girls learning with school loans
Estimates suggest that up to 20 million girls and young women in low- and middle-income countries globally dropped out of school following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through Opportunity EduFinance, we support getting more children into better schools with social finance by improving access and education quality in schools.
From school fee loans, which help parents cover the costs of education – from school fees to buying the essentials like textbooks, uniforms and other out-of-pocket costs – to EduQuality programs which addresses unconscious gender bias in classrooms and aims to improve the quality of teaching, through mentorship, collaboration and other tools to help fill gaps in low- and middle-income schools.
A recent study found girls had greater learning gains through the EduQuality initiatives – their English literacy improvements were the equivalent to nearly an additional half year of schooling.
Help Opportunity invest in and reach more girls globally this Day of the Girl Child by donating today.