Read and watch the video of Dan Rather’s important story

Watch Kavita Ramdas discuss human rights initiatives on Bill Moyers Journal

Learn more at Oprah Winfrey’s For All Women Registry

Listen to a message from Nicholas Kristof

See full story at cnn.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/14/yemen.childbirth.death/index.html

Read Bill Gates, Sr.’s entire review of the Half the Sky at the Huffington Post.

Tamara Woodbury Girl Effect Presentation to AGSES from GSACPC on Vimeo.

The Girl Effect is a growing global initiative, bringing attention to the advantages of investing in girls and young women. Through the efforts of multiple individuals and organizations, people are connecting and sharing ideas and information and they are collaborating to give greater awareness to unleashing the potential of girls and identifying them as a solution to some of the world’s greatest challenges.

On June 30, 2009, a presentation at the annual conference of the Association of Girl Scout Executive Staff in Phoenix featured The Girl Effect both on a global scale and in the microcosm of the work done by Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council. This powerful and compelling presentation begs for reflection and action in the shift of educational opportunities for girls but also the physical, emotional, and environmental well-being for them, not only globally but also in the US.

Any week The Girl Effect hits The New York Times is a good week, indeed. Last week The Girl Effect did just that, even though the words were different.

The Women’s Crusade by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is an outstanding article that appeared in The New York Times on Sunday, August 23. If you haven’t read it, it is well worth your time. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html#). It is actually several stories within a story. Staggering statistics of genocide based on gender. Profiles of individual girls and women who overcame abuse, poverty, lack of education, societal stigma—enormous odds—then improved their own lives and lives of those around them. The authors also offer some seemingly simple solutions, such as equipping girls to handle menstruation as a means of staying in school and showing governments with straight forward data and statistics that gender inequity significantly harms economic growth and is the “center piece of poverty.” Surely, this is The Girl Effect.

The article goes on to make the connection between subjugation of women and girls and turbulence, violence, extremism and terrorism. Surely, this is bringing forward the importance and relevance of The Girl Effect.

Kristof and WuDunn go further:

“So what would an agenda for fighting poverty through helping women look like? You might begin with the education of girls. . .”

In a separate but related blog, Nicholas Kristof announced the Half the Sky Competition, soliciting stories from readers who have had an experience underscoring an example of needs or solutions for girls and women in countries around the world. The places mentioned are Nepal, Kenya, Timbuktu and, yes, the United States, too. Thank you for including the USA. If you have a story to submit, by the way, the link for Half the Sky (also a new book by WuDunn) is http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/drumrollnow-the-half-the-sky-contest/

In the multitude of comments to this article, there was one that said, “I live in a Third World country. You know it as Detroit.” The author, Frances Saad, goes on to discuss the plight of the impoverished in America and question why it seems less in vogue to recognize and address poverty here, rather than in countries that are readily accepted as “third world.” Her question is timely. This is why some of us have gathered to bring voice, attention and organization to a movement for The Girl Effect USA.

Most institutions, including those in the USA and Europe, give tight prescriptions of what it means to be a girl or woman. Regardless of where we live, we lead our lives immersed in social and cultural tenants that prescribe and define who we are and what we should or can do. For most of us, religion has played a huge part in defining our cultures. The women’s movement brought a liberating force onto some of the shores of long held boundaries in Western cultures and patriarchal practices but sadly it also reinforced a polarity between the genders and did not reveal the deep cultural biases toward the expression of feminine qualities by either gender. Many women and men of faith are seeking dialogue about the healthy expressions of their religious beliefs, liberating the vital more feminine capacities that women and men bring to communities of faith which evolve into to the strongest tenant in most cultures.

On July 15, 2009, former President Jimmy Carter brought his prestige and wisdom to the forefront of this dialogue. President Carter is a member of The Elders, an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela to offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. The Elders have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on the grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

President Carter took a strong stand regarding how religious beliefs contribute to the subjugation of women and girls: “The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.”

I include this reference with some trepidation, knowing that this challenge will be particularly painful for men and women of many faiths. I believe, however, that the love of humankind that undergirds every major world religion is sufficiently robust to withstand emerging dialog that invites us to look anew at how religious beliefs have impacted human behaviors and cultures in ways that harm the well being of all people. As we do, my belief is that the more we see women, girls and what we often consider more feminine kinds of behavior for what they and these qualities can bring to the future of communities, the more the inequities that have developed over centuries will fall away to the benefit of all. Surely, our churches, temples, synagogues and all holy places are, too, under God’s sky?

Communities of faith have long been leaders in addressing the turbulence that falls on families when economies and government fail and hunger, disease and homelessness rise. This is true across the globe and to a growing extent here in the USA. On August 26, Stephen Lendman posted Growing Poverty and Despair in America (www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14910). If there is any further evidence needed that we have pockets of “third world” in every state in the USA, here it is. The statistics cited are not for the faint-of-heart. Forty-eight of our 50 states addressed or still face huge shortfalls in their 2010 state budgets. Most of these shortfalls have been addressed by cutting vital services to the most vulnerable. Of the 37.5 million people living in poverty and the 36.2 million Americans who are not counted as living in poverty but are none the less “food insecure” and economically living on a thread, women and children are the worst off and most dramatically impacted by state budget cuts. D spite some recent signs of general economic recovery, the trajectories for the poor, the homeless, and the food insecure are forecast to continue downward.

As August 2009 comes to a close, it is difficult to remember that at this time one year ago, the toppling of our economy had not become imminently clear. It is a different world today. But is it really? Many of the patterns of human society are as ancient as they are universal.

The Girl Effect is, too.