WomenStrong International Showcases Girls’ Voices from Across the Globe

WomenStrong International, a consortium of non-profit organizations in five nations supporting women-driven solutions to extreme urban poverty, has launched a Girls’ Leadership Forum featuring 19 young women who participated in the Global Scholars Program of the African Leadership Academy.

The Global Scholars Program (GSP) involving young high school leaders from around the world is run each summer by the African Leadership Academy, a two-year secondary school based in Johannesburg, South Africa, that immerses Africa’s most promising students in an intensive entrepreneurial leadership curriculum. One young leader, Clara Molot, a 2016 GSP participant from the United States deputized by WomenStrong as an Ambassador, gathered blog posts from female classmates from around the world in response to the following three questions:

– How has being a girl affected your experiences, colored your views?

– What are the societal aspects of the sexism you have experienced if any?

– Do you have a sense of how those gender issues play out in the poverty women and girls experience in your country?

Girls from 10 countries — Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria, Senegal, Tibet, Uganda and the United States — shared their thoughts and feelings about the discrimination, injustices and opportunities they see or experience in their countries. Molot curated and edited the stories, which zero in on education, family and marriage, sports, careers and aspiration, and safety and harassment as the themes in which these girls see the need for tangible progress. These themes reflect the 6 Essential Needs identified by WomenStrong as the basic needs that must be met for girls and women to thrive.

The Girls’ Leadership Forum appears in WomenStrong’s new “In Their Own Voices” feature section, which shares and promotes the stories, experiences and reflections of and about women and girls around the world.