GLOBAL GIRL MEDIA LAUNCHES YOUTH VIDEO SERIES: CORONA #IRL
16 Stories from 8 countries
from young women, ages 15-22, sharing their lives during Covid-19
GlobalGirl Media has mobilized its reporter alumna base to produce a video series documenting COVID-19 history from a young woman/girl’s point of view, CORONA #IRL (In Real Life.) The full impact of these times cannot be documented without the perspective of our youth, especially those from under-reported populations and regions such as South Africa, Kosovo, refugee camps, homeless shelters, and inner-city Chicago. This unprecedented series tells the stories of how the girls, their families, friends, and communities are dealing with the pandemic, “social distancing,” and the societal inequalities highlighted during the Covid-19 crisis.
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“Working with these young women over the last 6 weeks as they’ve gone from pitching their stories, to filming, shaping and editing their stories, all while facing the acute challenges they endure under the COVID-19 pandemic has been a powerful experience,” says Amie Williams, co-founder of GlobalGirl Media. “It is part counseling, part mentoring and a large part, for me, understanding the deep and profound ways these girls’ lives are being affected,” she continues.
The stories include a non-functioning domestic violence hotline in South Africa, a refugee forced to move from her camp in Berlin, the collapse of the Kosovo government in the midst of the pandemic, a single teen-age Mom in Chicago trying to hold it together, a Guatemalan girl dealing with her Grandmother’s death, and an East Los Angeles young woman interviewing the homeless and incarcerated. All the reports are raw, heartfelt, vulnerable and reflect the very real ways the girls are living and responding to the crisis. Keeping within the safety constraints of social distancing, the young women have used their phones and basic equipment to document the hope, friendships, creativity, challenges and accomplishments, from their homes, in refugee camps, inner cities, rural areas and suburbia.
As the news from mainstream media continues its important coverage of the epidemic, the girls’ perspectives will offer an intimate and personal look at the effects this worldwide state of emergency has had on youth. For some girls, being quarantined at home is a time to binge watch movies and have fun with friends on TikTok. But for most girls around the world, they are serving on the frontlines of protecting themselves and their families from economic and health disaster.
The GlobalGirl Media series, Corona IRL, will highlight the challenges, successes, new ideas, and hopes of a generation that is proving itself vital in leading the change we want to see in the world.
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GGM WINS GIRLS VOICES FOR CHANGE AWARDS IN TWO CATEGORIES!
We are thrilled to announce GlobalGirl Media won the top video awards from Girls Voices For Change in the Story Category, we won the Judges Award for Sophia Rising (Kenya) and the Audience Award for Under the Lemon Tree (Greece). Congratulations to our lead producers, Adele Qias and Sophie Lesiapadei who were also awarded cash scholarships to go towards their education. We are so proud of all the girls who participated in the production of these stories as well. Thanks to our partners Melissa Network and i-MedD (Greece) and Samburu Girls Foundation and BRAVE (Kenya). You can watch these videos on our site.
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GLOBALGIRL UNEARTH PROJECT A GREAT EXAMPLE OF GENDER LENS INVESTING
“Too few girls have the chance to make decisions about any aspect of their lives – whether they can stay in school, whether and what they can study, when or who they marry, accessing health care, and if and where they can see friends,” Swatee Deepak, director of With and For Girls (WFG) says. WFG is a funding collaborative that seeks to shift the scales of power in teen girls’ favor. It gives financial support to girl-led and -centered groups around the world and engages young women in participatory grantmaking panels. This means, every year, former winning organizations train teen girls to choose the next prize recipients. As we’ve pointed out, girls and young women ages 10 to 24 make up 12.5% of the world’s population — around 900 million people total. But, less than 2 cents of every international aid dollar goes to campaigns directed toward girls in this age group.
Deepak says working with girls to address this gap is a worthwhile endeavor for funders. “Though meaningfully engaging girls in decision-making takes time, the learning, insights and benefits for us as well-known funders have been incomparable to other forms of grantmaking. Observing the critical analysis and contextualization of issues and approaches amongst 16-year-olds in the girls’ grantmaking panels blows you away.”
Putting Girls in the Grantmaking Seat
WFG awards grants in five regions; Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, the American continent and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. It gives out flexible annual awards ranging from $5,000 to $50,000, depending on the budgets of winning organizations, along with other grants and supports. So far, it has awarded close to $3 million to 60 girl-led and girl-centered groups in 41 countries.
In October 2019, panels of adolescent girls between the ages of 14 and 18 from each of the served regions will meet to interview shortlisted organizations for the annual WFG award. The panels will choose up to 25 new winning groups.
WFG’s members are EMpower, FRIDA, Mama Cash, NoVo Foundation, Plan International UK, Comic Relief, Stars Foundation, the Global Fund for Children, Nike Foundation, Purposeful (the Collective’s current convening partner) and, as of July 2019, the Global Fund for Women.
Purposeful is a grassroots-based organization and movement building hub for teen girls headquartered in Freetown, Sierra Leone. As previously reported on Inside Philanthropy, Purposeful carries out research, convening, participatory grantmaking for girls, and media campaigns. Before moving to Purposeful in 2018, WFG was housed at the private Stars Foundation since it launched in 2014. We asked Deepak how the transition to Purposeful was going. She says it’s “been an incredible journey so far.”
“WFG and Purposeful have such aligned missions and new ways of doing things; collaborative, participatory decision-making, amplifying girls’ voices and, with Purposeful’s unique Global South-led and locally rooted approach, I see so much opportunity for continuing to carve a bold new path that our sector is so desperately looking for,” she says.
New Grants in the WFG Pipeline
WFG is launching three new grants this year. The first is the Visibility Fund, which will pay for current award winners’ travels to global events, peer spaces and conferences. Deepak says this fund aims to ensure “grassroots girl leaders have the space, opportunity and platform” to share stories, access resources and find new connections and partners.
The second new fund is the Collaborative Action Fund. It provides opportunities for winners to engage in cross-sector and cross-border partnerships. Deepak says it is “a game-changer, and I want every funder to give their grantees information and contact details of other grantees, and funding to collaborate!”
One example of a team effort this fund already supports is the Unearth Project by BRAVE in South Africa, GlobalGirl Media in the U.S. and the Samburu Girls Foundations in Kenya. These organizations are using $15,000 from WFG to find, train and support Kenyan girls in becoming storytellers and advocates, both on behalf of their teen communities and for African wildlife. Participating girls will create multimedia narratives centering on issues like child marriage, education, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual violence and reproductive health care.
“Since joining Unearth in late April, I have united with my sisters from across Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania in fighting against early marriage, [FGM] and beading,” Lekaasia, a 17-year-old Unearth participant, says. And, in partnership with Save the Elephants, the young women will receive education and training related to anti-poaching efforts, conflicts between wildlife and humans, and conservation practices. Lekaasia has learned about “access to clean water for both girls and wildlife, and employing more women in conservation jobs like rangers, researchers, even conservancy owners and managers.”
The third new grant is an opportunity for a secondary round of financial support. With girls again positioned as decision makers, previous winners will be chosen to receive additional flexible funding.
Ramatu Bangura, NoVo program officer, explains the benefits and importance of backing participatory grantmaking for teen girls. “We need girls’ perspectives if we are to dismantle all that comes with patriarchy, and we cannot do that until they have the freedom and power to make decisions that matter to us all. We are a member of [WFG] because we want to be in better practice of listening to and learning from girls. We want to support a philanthropic sector that does the same.”
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Philanthropy Women covers funding for gender equity in all sectors of society. We want to significantly shift public discourse, particularly in philanthropy, toward increased action for gender equality. You can support our work and access unlimited and premium content with one of our subscriptions.
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GlobalGirl from Greece gets credit in The Guardian
We are proud to announce Andriana Theochari, one of our global girl reporters from Greece worked on a photo-journalism project this summer about the devastating wildfires on the Greek island of Evia, with award-winning photojournalist Gideon Mendel. Their work garnered a huge spread in the U.K. paper, The Guardian, and has gone on to be featured in photo festivals. Stay tuned for more from Andriana! She is a rising star!
