The girl effect

Just discovered The Girl Effect via NorthTemple (which seems to be down at the moment, otherwise I’d link to it):

The Girl Effect, n. The powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

Cool. It’s basically microfinancing, focused specifically on adolescent girls because, to quote their site, “girls are the most likely agents of change.” A nice focus on an ordinarily invisible segment of society in the developing world.

Make sure you check out the video, by the way. Simple yet effective:

Did that movie just say that if you remove a girl from her husband, all the worlds problems will be solved? ;)

I love these sorts of things. Thanks for the heads-up.

Ben, you’ve found something near and dear to my heart.

http://www.kbyutv.org/smallfortunes/

My family has watched “Small Fortunes” several times, just because we like it so much. I cry through it every time. Sivamma Sajja is probably my favorite of the borrowers. Most of the people given loans are women simply because they are more likely to invest in their families than men are in poverty situations. I’m not sure why, but there it is. Girls are the future.

I could soapbox about this for a long time, but I won’t. Thanks for letting me know about The Girl Effect! Awesome stuff.

Ben,

Why did you choose the Isaiah allusion for your blog name?

The Girl Effect seems to be on to a great idea. I’ve seen the LDS video “Small Fortunes” and was quite impressed. Those microloans work wonders.

Xister — At first I smelt an anti-marriage rat, too, but I looked into what The Girl Effect is saying. It’s not marriage that’s the enemy, it’s child marriage. Many girls in underdeveloped countries are married off very young, because their own family can’t afford to support them. It’s unfair to the individual girls, and collectively speaking, it perpetuates problem of poverty.

I love this video. The background music does so much for it–does anyone know what the piece is called, who wrote it?
The message is reminiscent of first-wave feminists and progressives (early twentieth century) who pushed for human rights, sanitation, etc. LOVE IT.

Interesting video clip…I am not sure all I am feeling… vent time, watch out…

As a boomer who has watched the trade offs I have a different take. Yes Whitney it is “reminiscent of first-wave feminists and progressives (early twentieth century) who pushed for human rights, sanitation, etc.”

Grandma spent a night in jail for voting before it was legal to. Mom was a high level GS 23 government employee and retired working as a Supervisor at NATO, in Belgium.

I was reared outside the LDS church. I converted my senior year of HS. I was reared in a single parent home. My parents divorced when I was 9. I was a full on liberal when I graduated from high school. Even won women’s Lib debates in class, in HS. I started college with a Sociology major, and switched to Art and Design. I graduated from BYU in Apr 1980. Today, I finished my Masters thesis in Education.

After rearing seven of my own, I am a full on Madisonian conservative now. I have lived long enough to see a fuller and bigger picture.

By the time I was graduating from high school things were in full swing. Yes, we got improved sanitation and working conditions for women. From the time of the GI bill until now, we did a few interesting things:
1) We devalued motherhood and what it takes to build a cohesive family with children with a work ethic. We called stay at home moms parasites. We turned on our own kind in the vilest of ways. We were short sighted enough to thing home making and homemaking were the same thing, and were merely menial labor.
2) We placed too much value in experts, Dr. Spock etc…
3) Though women thought they were emancipated, many could not parent or be wives without seeking expert advice. Where has this emancipation and expert dependence gotten America? A high divorce rate, delayed maturity, and broken homes.
4) Women found out what they were capable of, but while doing so, few bothered to ask, if what they were doing, was what they should be doing.
5) Both men and women were sold the idea that education and job training were the same thing. For the last three generations, 1945-1963, 1963-1984, 1984 to 2001, we were taught that education is the promised land.
6) We threw out the baby with the wash. For the last 50 years, we have pushed children into schooling as the way to the future. Mothers stopped teaching their daughters how to be wives and mothers, how to manage resources wisely. Almost if if that was something that would magically happen at the altar. Many women struggle to cope. Why do you think Martha Stewart was able to build such an empire? Why do 1000s of women rely on flylady to email them everyday to tell them how to manage their homes?

We are taught that school and job training is education that education will get you to a great job that a great job equals money that money is success. So, we have destroyed the family in our country, now we want to chant the same thing to them?

Well, I agree that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Only for the last fifty years, the role has been abdicated, and the hand rocking the cradle has been a hireling. Government nannies and day care centers. What has it really bought us?

The adversary would have us believe money is the answer to our problems.
Is it really?

I do not want poverty for anyone. The answer is more complex than social engineering and bank loans.

At the heart of lasting change is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Along with the change of heart, sustaining one another is important. Without that change, and without the spirit, arm of flesh will continue to blunder, fixing one thing while causing other problems.

Ye, my thesis dealt with women, the changes of the last fifty years, and solutions some are looking to.

I went on to view the site and explore it. Yes they work with the Population council whose main focus is based on the premise of scarce resources, hence the need for population control…

Sustainability.

Teenage pregnancy (which is anyone under 20) is a problem in many parts of the world, because of lack of nutrition. A lot of the malnutrition is because their governments interfere and prefer their people weak. I remember, most of my growing up years seeing containers of food sitting on docks in Africa, because of their governments.

Pregnancy and childbirth are not necessarily incompatible with teen years. Jesus’ mother was most likely between 13 and 16.

I have a friend working in Uganda teaching right now. There are dark deep traditions the aides can be cured by having sex with a virgin. Educating the perpetrators is not enough, they tend to believe their cultural traditions. There are roving gangs of teenage boys that rape younger orphaned children.

I see this is a simplistic solution to an enormous problem.

The underlining message I get from this site is:
1) there is no God, therefore over population is due to ignorance. Stop ignorance and poverty goes away.

We have had mass free mandatory “education” for 50 years! We even had decades of the war on poverty. Yet, with all that man power and all that money, all that education, all that sex education, all the contraceptives, we still have an increasing poverty and teen pregnancy rate in this country.

2) Some scientist somewhere can predict with accuracy what planet sustainability is, in terms of family size.

3) That somehow, an educated girl, business woman, is the panacea.

I believe in education with all my heart. However, this we should have done and not left the other undone. We are just pushing the “super woman” heroine myth into the third world. Just as we are reaping a whirlwind, we are going to export it.

Remember that preaching the Gospel changes behavior better than anything els can. Yes, they need their tummy full. They also need to be useful. However, feeding their bodies, educating their brains, getting them started in business, will not and cannot truly change the world and overcome deep beliefs, alone. Only baptism and the Holy Ghost can lead to the changes that will transform the first three, into a sustained peace and abundant life..

Xister: Whatever. :P

Hilary: Cool — thanks for the link!

Penelope: I wanted something from the scriptures, and I liked the imagery. In retrospect I suppose it seems a little pompous — “Look at me, I’m king of the hill!” — but that’s not what I was aiming for at all, trust me. :) Basically, I just like Isaiah a lot.

Kathy: Good point on child marriage.

Whitney: I don’t know, but you could probably dig up an email address on their site and find out…

Donna: I agree that permanent change can only come from gospel principles, but that doesn’t mean we should shun other approaches that are also trying to help fix problems. And since not everyone is going to accept the gospel, abandoning those other solutions would be unwise at best. There’s nothing wrong with supporting a solution like this — they’re just trying to make the world a better place, that’s all. Sure, it’s not going to solve all the world’s problems, but it is going to make a difference. And that’s all that matters.