GGM WINS BLACK GIRLS FREEDOM FUND!

FROM NEWSWEEK

Author: Laura Powers

A new film is changing the narrative of young woman and girls in Africa. Produced by young women, “Sophia Rising” follows the story of Sophia, a nineteen year old in Northern Kenya, as she escapes child marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and limited access to education to graduate high school and apply for university. The film was written, filmed and produced by Kenyan and Tanzanian girls, as part of the UNEARTH project, is a collaboration between BRAVE, Global Girl Media, and Samburu Girls Foundation, and puts young women and girls at the center both as the subject and as the storytellers.

The challenges that Sophia has faced are not uncommon. At 14, her family (predominantly her uncles) pressured her to marry a 58 year old man. With the support of her father, she was able to avoid that life and attend school instead but not all have been as lucky. According to UNICEF, in 2014, 23% of women in Kenya were married before the age of 18. Sophia’s older sisters were married by the age of ten, and there is pressure for her younger sister to follow suit.

With the pressure to marry at a young age, receiving an education can be challenging. In Northern Kenya, 19% of girls start school, let alone finish. But studies have shown that higher rates of young women with an education and an independent income reduce violence against women and improve overall economic strength. Women often bear the brunt of negative impact from climate change, political violence and economic downturns, but without access to education, it is difficult for them to enter spaces where there voice will be heard on these issues.

As the film and Sophia’s story highlights, women in these difficult situations are not without agency. Without being handed the space to speak out, women in places like Kenya are increasingly creating their own spaces to tell their stories. Non profits are supporting these efforts, like Fempo in Democratic Republic of Congo, which gives women the training and tools necessary to run for public office.

One of the co-producers of the project,  BRAVE, has discovered a unique way to support young girls and provide them with skills and self-confidence to speak out: Travel. BRAVE takes young women and girls facing violence, child marriage and FGM and takes them on a trip across their country, which is often the first time these girls have left their communities. India Baird, the founder and director of BRAVE, says, “BRAVE uses the challenge of travel and adventure in wild places to create opportunities for girls, and works with those who can provide the resources, knowledge, experience, and safety that girls need to lead.” The trips create a safe space for them to speak about their experiences, while learning about things like conservation, advocacy and even filmmaking. By learning from other girls in different situations, as well as discovering the experiences of people in other parts of the country, these young women gain understanding of issues that they face, and brainstorm solutions.

The ICTforWomanity interview series focuses this week on video production. To cover this area, we are meeting with Amie Williams, an award winning producer/director specializing in documentary film and video for television. Amie  is the Executive Director & Co-Founder of GlobalGirl Media (GGM), an organization that develops the voice and media literacy of teenage girls and young women, ages 14-22, in under-served communities, by teaching them to create and share digital journalism designed to improve scholastic achievement, ignite community activism and spark social change.

Servane Mouazan – Womanity: Amie, what should the world specifically know about GlobalGirl Media?

Amie Williams – GlobalGirl Media: By arming girls with cameras in low income urban areas, the invisible girl is transformed into an agent of visibility, with the power to disrupt the silence surrounding gender-based violence, reproductive rights, poverty, racism, sexism and many critical issues facing adolescent girls today.

SM: What is it that you are doing differently, compared to other citizen media innovations? 

AW: GGM harnesses the power of new digital media to empower young women to bring their often-overlooked perspectives onto the global media stage.

GGM offers an immersive, interactive educational curriculum, which features both soft and hard media skills, with a focus on entrepreneurship: our training prepares young women to be competitive in an increasingly challenging job market. We also connect girls across borders and boundaries, via Skype and social media. Since we are global, we encourage girls to think about citizen media as a global movement.

We give girls cameras and challenge them to take on the untold story, the one that matters, because it matters to them.

SM: What type of technology do you use at Global Girls Media and how does it make a difference?

AW: We focus on video production and blogging. Research has shown girls’ relationships, self-esteem and school performance are negatively impacted by the more time they spend online. Both traditional and social media is dumbing girls down, consistently negatively impacting their body image, sexuality, self-esteem and ability to succeed. When statistic after statistic tells us how under-represented women are in media, and when the male perspective dominates most of this media, it unconsciously reinforces the invisibility and silencing of women.

Global Girl Media has the solution: hand the tools of authoring this media over to girls. We give girls cameras and challenge them to take on the untold story, the one that matters, because it matters to them. We believe that by empowering girls to tell their own stories and teaching them that their lives matter, a systemic change begins to take form in family, school and community. Media plays such a central and powerful role in girls’ lives that being authors of that media is critical in helping them navigate a world seemingly daunting because the white, male perspective dominates it. What we are really doing is advocating for a girl-driven “global citizenship” where young women connect using new media and share their experience, strength and hope with each other from places that are under-reported, marginalized, stereotyped or silenced.

SM: What questions do people never ask you, you wished they did?

AW: It is this question:

“How is the work you are doing impacting the actual heart and soul of individual girls?”

As opposed to outward metrics like academic performance, numbers of girls trained and scalability of program, what about the individual journey each girl begins once they start our program? It is very difficult to gauge soft outcomes like the rise in a girl’s self-esteem or links to decisions made or feelings developed as a result of learning to tell one’s own story or focus on positive storytelling in negative environments.

A report by AWID (Association of Women in International Development) in 2010 questioned current M&E practices in its report, “Capturing Change in Women’s Realities”,” and discusses this need for more creative and thorough approaches to assessing the success of girls and women’s rights programs, and the inherent challenge in measuring social change within the gender context.

A quote from this report really helped me:

“When you work for women’s interests, it’s two steps forward – if you’re really smart and very lucky! – And at least one-step back. In fact, it’s often two or three steps back! And those steps back are, ironically, often evidence of your effectiveness; because they represent the threat you have posed to the power structure and its attempt to push you back. Sometimes, even your ‘success stories’ are nothing more than ways the power structure is trying to accommodate and contain the threat of more fundamental change by making small concessions.”

SM: What was an unexpected suggestion or commend by one your program participants that opened up new perspectives?

AW: Basically the one message (which comes in all sorts of ways) from our girl reporters is “don’t give up on this program, no matter how hard it is to keep it funded and keep it going… we need this!”

I get messages on Facebook, I hear it when during a training, a girl who had submitted her master’s thesis, that day told me: “I could not have gotten this far without GlobalGirl Media, it really turned my life around…” It’s thanks to moments like this that I realize just how powerful and far-reaching our program is.

SM: Can you share a story of success that your venture triggered?

AW: I would like to share two stories.

The first one is of Sthokozo Mabaso, a young HIV-positive woman from South Africa who left rural Transvaal with no money or hope, ended up as a housemaid for a cruel Aunt in Soweto, found out about our program, really excelled, and we invited her to cover the World AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., where she was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, blogged for Huffington Post, and returned to South Africa to a full scholarship at a private film school and is now working in the professional film industry, most recently on the Hollywood film MATRIX.

The other huge success story is one of our reporters, Rocio Ortega, graduate of our very first program in Los Angeles, born and raised in East L.A., first in family to attend university, who took our program and as a result got introduced and interested in political training for leadership. She not only won a full scholarship to Wellesley, but she was also selected as the National Spokesperson for the UN Program Girl Up! – the only girl of color- and introduced First Lady Michelle Obama at the last GirlUP! Convention. She also won the MTV/HALO award for teen leaders, which came with a $10K contribution to GGM and to her education. She wants to run for political office and be the youngest Latina to run for Governor of California.

SM: What was a pivotal moment in/around your programme?

AW: I think the groundswell of awareness around the overall gender imbalance in media, movies or news and recently in particular the EEOC investigations here in the U.S. as to gender discrimination in Hollywood. We have been at this five years, and in those five years I have seen a palpable shift in the awareness, but not so much the financial support behind the work to see tangible progress.

Lately I have really been inspired by our Moroccan group of GlobalGirls who took on the leadership of the entire organization themselves. They are now registered in Morocco as an association and are fully running the organization, training more girls, getting paid work as journalists and videographers, and growing their vision of how media should represent girls and women in Morocco!

Connect to GlobalGirl Media on line:

Web: www.globalgirlmedia.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/globalgirlmedia

Twitter: @globalgirlmedia

Instagram: global_girl_media