Delhi, India - In our World Café session today at the GGI (Grassroots Girls Initiative)/GFC Knowledge Exchange, small groups discussed various issues relating to improving the lives of adolescent girls. My group discussed the skills and tools necessary for adolescent girls to be able to transform their lives. The notion of agency, or self-direction, is critical to this goal. In early discussion, the key elements of this type of empowerment were easily identified: education; economic empowerment; life skills (such as decision making, self-awareness, and self-confidence); reproductive health information, knowledge, services, and supplies; independent mobility; and knowledge of rights.
Additionally, a social network of peers and “navigators” provides a needed source for support, security, and nurturing, while also mitigating the isolation too often encountered by girls of low social status in their families and communities—such as child brides, girls in domestic work, out-of school girls, rural girls, and young mothers. In this context, my colleagues and I also discussed the importance of role models and mentors to provide vision and a sense of possibility. In all settings, but especially in culturally or socially restrictive environments, supporters and champions are equally necessary, providing a safety net so the girls know that “someone’s got their back.”
As the conversation progressed, we felt we were becoming stuck in generalities and not breaking new ground. What if we could actually equip a girl for her everyday empowerment? What if we could give her a backpack (a symbol of free mobility) filled with the necessary tools that could help her direct the course of—indeed, transform!—her own life? Here’s what we came up with in a conversation that was inspired, impassioned, and full of laughter:
In her backpack:
- Cell phone (for social networking, calling her mentor, and even banking(!))
- Some money of her own
- A map, a compass, or a GPS!
- Toilet kit (some tissues and some sanitary napkins – her dignity)
- ID card (a birth certificate, some documentation of her identity)
- A good book
- A condom (or, in an ideal world, a female condom or some microbicide)
- Pocket-sized directory of women’s organizations and community resources
- Pocket-sized copy of the International Declaration of Human Rights and/or Convention on the Rights of the Child (armed with information!)
- Bottle of clean drinking water
- Change of clothes (you never know…)
- Self-defense tool (hot pepper spray or maybe some martial arts skills!)
- Some good tunes (music gives confidence!)
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