By Tessa Davis | Program Director
The Girl Power Project is transforming communities by disrupting harmful cultural practices through community engagement and empowering girls to reach their full potential.
Just Like My Child Foundation’s (JLMC) very first step in implementing The Girl Power Project in a community is to lay a critical foundation, before girls are trained, by engaging with parents, teachers and local leaders in discussions about the legal and human rights of children and the benefits to the entire community when girls stay in school, avoid child marriage, early pregnancy and disease. Through this process, community members sign a covenant agreeing to not only allow girls to fully participate in The Girl Power Project, but also to create an enabling environment for girls to achieve their dreams.
As a result of this important first step, JLMC has witnessed communities go from treating girls like second class citizens to actively working towards solutions to protect girls. For example, Namumira, a rural community in Central Uganda has gone so far as to begin saving funds for justice, so that when girls in their own and neighboring communities fall victim to sexual violence, they are able to help her seek recourse. In a recent rape case, funds were utilized to transport a young victim to the hospital to obtain appropriate medical tests and reports as well as pay for police transport to investigate the perpetrator. The rapist was arrested and is currently serving time in prison.
Mr. Mpoza, a Girl Power Advocate and Community Legal Volunteer trained by JLMC’s Project Justice in the Namumira community, explained to our team that the Girl Power Project lays the foundation for justice and respect of children. Mr. Mpoza also says that a community must have empathy towards injustice, which he feels has been developed through the community dialogues he has held in his capacity as a Community Legal Volunteer. According to Mr. Mpoza, it was easy for community members to understand their obligation to look out for the girls after the Girl Power Project was implemented. Community members saw saving for justice as a logical way to fulfill their obligation to the girls.
Through our three year Clinton Global Initiative commitment, JLMC will reach 10,000 girls over the next three years, administering a social vaccine by laying critical community foundations and reaching 50-80% of girls in every community where The Girl Power Project is implemented. On behalf of the million girls we hope to reach through this project, we wish to thank you for your ongoing support! We hope you will continue to follow our exciting progress.
We encourage you to click on all of the links we have provided and share not only our story and videos with others who may wish to get involved, but also your story! We would love to hear about why you are moved to support The Girl Power Project! Share your stories here and we will feature our favorite in our next Global Giving report!
We extend our utmost gratitude to our mentor Population Council whose tutelage and support have helped us greatly in understanding the effectivness of our work and strengthening our programming.
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