Tag

Adolescent Girls investment Plan

November 12, 2024

Resourcing girls: The potential and challenges of girl- and youth-led organising

Learn More, Research, Stay Updated

Young people have been hailed as torchbearers of gender equality and as key actors in identifying and implementing solutions our world urgently requires. This said, understanding how girl- and youth-led organisations operate and their positioning within the ecosystem of gender equality and social change efforts requires careful examination. This report explores the experiences of girl-and youth-led work across low-and middle-income country contexts, and aims to understand the characteristics, contributions, and challenges of girl-and youth-led organisations. It highlights the global focus on gender equality and girls’ rights, emphasizing the increasing visibility of these issues in development commitments yet the complexities in translating these into tangible benefits for girls.

It draws on a rapid evidence review of secondary literature and key informant interviews with girl-and youth-led organisation members, intermediary organisations involved in funding girl- and youth-led groups and monitoring and evaluation experts to understand the contributions and impact of girl-and youth-led initiatives within the broader ecosystem of adolescent and youth empowerment and development as well to investigate the challenges they face in carrying out and expanding their work. The report concludes with reflections and key recommendations stemming from the research.

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September 19, 2024

Beyond commitments: Championing a new Girl-Centred Accountability Charter

Advocacy, Learn More

The Girl-Centered Accountability Charter, launched at the Summit of the Future Action Days 2024, is the keystone of AGIP’s Global Accountability Champions Platform. The Charter outlines 8 actions for governments to model and promote accountability with and for adolescent girls in global advocacy and policy platforms.  

Governments which sign the Charter become ‘Accountability Champions’ and make a public pledge to be accountable to their girl-centred commitments, lead by example, and influence other powerholders to practice accountability.  

Young people, UN bodies and girl-centered organisations can also support the initiative by endorsing the Charter and show solidarity with adolescent girls globally.  

Download the Event Summary report.

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January 11, 2024

International philanthropy needs a strategy for human rights, well-being, justice and peace

From our Members, Stay Updated

Reflections from Shift The Power Global Summit by Pooja Singh, Girl and Youth Engagement Specialist, AGIP

Recently, I had the great privilege to attend the Shift The Power Global Summit in Bogotá, Colombia as a GFCF travel grant recipient. As I sit in the comfort of home reflecting on the whirlwind experience of the Summit, I realize there is much to celebrate and learn from, both in terms of how the Summit was organized and what each participant brought to the convening.

This reflection would not be complete without gratitude to TerritoriA and the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF) for making all the Visa-related information and documents available in a simplified, timely, and accessible format.  Having had the opportunity to attend other conferences in the past, this was the smoothest process I have experienced so far.

The overall Summit design remains a highlight for me. With a late start on Day 1 and 5 pm closures, long lunch breaks, plenty of coffee breaks, limited number of parallel sessions, and fun reception experiences on all three days, I managed to not just engage with the content but also absorb and retain it. Moreover, the intentional pace of the Summit allowed me to interact with people beyond their job and project descriptions, leaving me with a sense of newfound friendships within the feminist allyship that I really cherish at present.

Shift the Power is a mobilizing force that seeks to highlight, harness, resource, legitimize and join up these new ways of “deciding and doing” that are emerging around the world under the larger umbrella of movement generosity so that it can galvanize a vision of a good society and serve as a force for genuine and lasting change.”

The Summit brought together 700 people from 70 countries to contribute to this global conversation on reshaping international funding systems to be more locally led and owned, and for communities to be in charge of their development.

Key notes from the Summit (Notes are not direct quotes but have been paraphrased)

  1. Nana Afadzinu, West Africa Civil Society Institute [Ghana]: Drop the logos, egos, and siloes- together we can do so much more.
  2. Magda Pocheć, FemFund [Poland]: Five strategies on power shifting: intersectional organizing, facilitating solidarity amidst different communities, value local change, regenerative activism, and transformative leadership.
  3. Kelly Bates, Interaction Institute for Social Change [USA]: The skills required for healing are not soft skills. They are deeply necessary for life on a planet that is deeply suffering.  
  4. Sohier Assad,  Rawa Creative Palestinian Communities Fund [Palestine]: The story of Gaza is a story of colonization and colonization is tied with capitalism. It shows whose bodies have been exploited to serve the economic interests of those holding the most power.
  5. Amibika Satkunanathan, Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust [Sri Lanka]: There is an urgent need to acknowledge that structural violence exists within the development sector. It is critical to ask if our philanthropy is truly dismantling such power structures or reinforcing them?
  6. Marta Ruiz, Journalist and former Commissioner of Truth [Colombia]: Peace building is not just an agreement. Empathy, justice healing, and reconciliation in peace building work is essential.  Read Marta Ruiz’s Summit keynote address here.
  7. Barry Knight, GFCF [UK]: Data collection needs to move from being a cold, bureaucratic process towards centring emotions and moral imagination in how impact and success is measured. At present, the donors are asking for the wrong data.
  8. Marie-Rose Romain Murphy, Haiti Community Foundation [Haiti]: Persistence is power, and hope is a strategy. International donors need to reflect on how they impact the self-reliance and local expertise when extending aid without centering local leadership.
  9. Rita Thapa, founder of Tewa [Nepal]: International aid actors need to reflect on the power structure they reinforce through their practices.  This a critical need to reassess who we feel accountable towards. Watch this video with Rita Thapa’s take on #ShiftThePower.
  10. Biraj Patnaik, National Foundation for India [India]:  Can we really shift power without shifting the economic system? Geo-politics can trump all solidarity and there is a need to continue speaking truth to power.
  11. Hibak Kalfan, NEAR Network [USA]: Donors and CSOs need to humble themselves and truly reflect on whether their interventions actually work and if not, remain open to learning and leaning in on community knowledge and solidarity. Always ask: how can I help you?

While we were discussing different ways in which power is concentrated and exercised, the current state of world affairs with worsening war, conflicts, and genocide did not go unnoticed. There was a clear understanding that the geo-politics and economic interests of those holding the most power lacks clear understanding of human rights and well-being, humanitarian justice, and peace. The powerlessness of international institutions in de-escalating the situation and meditating peace has never been more evident. The Summit participants also clearly articulated the inherent issues with how the international philanthropy currently operates and raised several challenging recommendations for the philanthropists and grant-makers to reflect on their practices and adopt a more community-centric approach that prioritizes local leadership.

While the realities are dark, the Summit was an encouraging space to cross-learn on ways to continue challenging the power structures in our homes, organizations, and communities to whatever extent possible because hope is a strategy, and we need to practice what we preach.

Check out our Adolescent Girls Advisory Committee, Call to Action and past advocacy activities to learn more about how AGIP is working to shift the power and resources to adolescent girls!

December 11, 2024

Girls on the Agenda and at the Table

Events

6 December 2024
2:00pm  GMT
90 minutes

Enabling power-sharing in decision-making processes through Girl Advisory models

Organizing Partners: AGIP, EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation & Global Fund for Women

This webinar, organised by Girl Advisors of the Adolescent Girls Investment Plan (AGIP) on 6th December 2024, celebrated successes, shared valuable lessons, and offered actionable recommendations from the Girls Advisory models of AGIP, EMPower – The Emerging Markets Foundation, and the Global Fund for Women.  

The event also engaged community-based mentors to spotlight the need for in-person safety and learning support and two AGIP board members to underline the need for intergenerational leadership in the current context of increasing roll backs on girls’ rights.  

September 10, 2024

Beyond commitments: Championing a new Girl-Centred Accountability Charter

Events

New York
21 September 2024
3:00pm  GMT-4 (New York, Toronto)
90 minutes

Thank you for attending today’s event: Sign on to the charter or endorse it!

Event title: Beyond commitments: Championing a new Girl-Centered Accountability Charter

Organizing Partners: AMPLIFY Girls, Government of Canada, Government of Sierra Leone, UNICEF

Schedule: 21st September, 15:00-16:30 EST, 90 minutes

Venue:  Blue Gallery, New York City

Background: Despite growing interest in adolescent girls’ leadership, global advocacy andpolicy spaces often lack formal accountability mechanisms that meaningfully include adolescent girls in delivering and tracking progress on commitments made towards gender equality and girls’ rights. Furthermore, many financial pledges made to advance girls’ rights fail to directly benefit them. Key global advocacy and policy spaces, such as the Summit of the Future and Beijing+30, offer opportunities for renewed multi-stakeholder commitments that will significantly impact the lives and futures of adolescent girls. Hence, advocating for their meaningful inclusion beyond making commitments is crucial to accelerate the progress towards a more equitable global future.

Event overview: Aligned with the actions and commitments outlined in the Pact for the Future, particularly those related to youth participation, gender equality, and the transformation of global governance, this event will spotlight the need for girls’ inclusion in delivering the global commitments on girls’ rights and launch a Girl-Centered Accountability Charter to drive progress following the Summit.

Key Highlights:

  • Adolescent girl intervention on the critical need for girl-centered accountability.
  • Insights presentation from ongoing research on girl-led accountability.
  • Launch of the Girl-Centered Accountability Charter along with the first group of member state Champions committed to practicing and promoting girl-centered accountability through AGIP’s Accountability Initiative.

Participants invited: Member states, Adolescent girls and youth, UN bodies, Girl-centered CSOs

Purpose:

  • Girls’ aspirations, priorities, and recommendations inform the implementation of the Summit’s commitments.
  • Increased political momentum and accountability on advancing girls’ rights in the follow-up to the Summit of the Future and towards Beijing+30.
  • Governments express willingness to become active allies with and for adolescent girls in global policy spaces and within their own countries’ leadership to advance the adolescent girl agenda.

Registration details

Please note that AGIP is organizing this session as a part of the very first Youth Power Summit 2024 co-organized by Fondation Botnar and Restless Development, coinciding with the UN’s Summit of the Future.

About the Youth Power Summit 2024

  • With 1.8 billion individuals representing the largest generation of young people in history, we must ensure young voices are not only heard but actively included in the global decision-making process.  
  • The two-day Youth Power Summit (21-22 September) will serve as a vibrant platform where young people can engage directly with policymakers, share their perspectives, and advocate for their rights and wellbeing. 

To attend the AGIP Accountability Event, please register for Day 1 of the Youth Power Summit.

In keeping with the Youth Power Summit’s principles of inclusivity and youth participation, AGIP will only be reserving slots for speakers. All other interested members need to register via the link above, which will give you access to the entirety of Day 1 of YPS. We highly encourage registered participants to explore the full YPS programme and join more than one event.

Please note: Tickets are on a first come first serve basis, and are extremely limited, so sign up fast!

Other information: Please revisit this page for information on accessibility, media and safety guidelines.