On the occasion of the United Nation’s 51st Commission on the Status of Women, the Huairou Commission organized a workshop, “Grassroots Girls Respond to Violence and HIV/AIDS”. The well-attended and participatory event featured Betty Makoni from the Girl Child Network (Zimbabwe), Ottilie Abraham and Sarah Andreki from the Namibia Girl Child Organization, Sommell Richards from Lawyers without Borders, Karen Austrian, founder of Binti Pamoja (Kenya) and Luna Avila, Beatrice Oshodi and Olivia Katz from the Lower East Side Girls’ Club (New York). Dahlia Goldenberg from the global offices of GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission moderated the panel. The speakers focused on the ways that empowered girl children are taking leadership in their organizations and communities.

Ottilie Abraham began with background information on Namibia and how under South African law men were historically given priority over women due to the South African constitution. Once Namibia was free of South African reign they were also free to draft their own constitution, which states that all people, men and women, are equal. At this point however, women had internalized a concept of inferiority, which feminists in Namibia have been working to overcome since.

Sarah Andreki, a young woman from the Namibia Girl Child Organization shared her work helping to support the many HIV/AIDS orphans in Namibia. The NGCO’s goal is to make these abandoned children feel loved and valued, through collecting food, uniforms for the children to wear to school and other necessities. The organization also places a priority on taking photographs and other forms of documentation for the children’s personal memorabilia.

Photography also served as an essential beginning for Binti Pamoja (Daughters Together), an organization co-founded by speaker Karen Austrian in the slum of Kibera in Kenya. Binti Pamoja began as a program about reproductive health in Kibera for girls aged 12-18. These girls justifiably found Kibera to be an unsafe place with much violence that often victimized girls. From its beginnings as a temporary photography program for young girls in Kibera, Binti Pamoja has expanded to a permanent safe space for girls, including on-going support groups, peer education on reproductive health, community workshops led by adolescent girls and recently, an economic empowerment program for girls. The leaders of the program discovered that the lack of economic empowerment would trump any other achievement they could make in the program. Therefore they began the new economic empowerment program All of the programs of Binti Pamoja are initiated and led by adolescents living in Kibera, and using a “cascading leadership” model, the first girls to have gone through the Binti Pamoja program are now becoming staff members.

Sommell Richards of Lawyers without Borders then shared the invaluable resource offered by her organization: pro bono legal services for civil society and community-based organizations from throughout the world. To access these services or learn more about Lawyers Without Borders, visit www.lawyerswithoutborders.com

Next, Luna Avila, Beatrice Oshodi and Olivia Katz shared the benefits they have gained as members of the Lower East Side Girls Club, which was established ten years ago as a safe space for girls to come together and forge relationships with one another. Beatrice Oshodi discussed her experiences in the LESGC and how it provided her life with direction and guidance, and the support she has gained there as a young photographer. Luna Avila, one of the first members of the Girls’ Club shared how far the Club has come over the past decade, and now includes economic empowerment training for young women in and around NYC through its girl-owned and run cooperative bakery which trains them on all aspects of small business, including advertising, management and entrepreneurial skills, financial literacy and, of course, baking, in order for the girls to be self-sufficient financially and in administration. The Lower East Side Girls’ Club is also using the cascading leadership model to ensure sustainability and continued girls’ leadership.

Betty Makoni, founder of the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe concluded the event with an exhilarating speech including her personal experiences and how she was able to translate her survival of rape, poverty, HIV/AIDS and marginalization into empowerment for a new generation of girls in Zimbabwe. GCN is currently made up of over five hundred clubs which are creating safe spaces for 30,000 girls across the country, in which they are learning their own value and the importance of becoming empowered enough to protect their physical space. This is the first step in their empowerment as women. Members of the Girl Child Network meet with an aim to dismantle patriarchy, and counteract all traditions where a woman’s voice is a taboo. Successes include situations where young girls are stand up against domestic violence for themselves and their mothers.

These experiences from the Girl Child Network, Binti Pamoja and the Lower East Side Girls’ Club all demonstrated the importance of supporting girls’ leadership and, vitally, finding safe spaces for girls within communities to ensure their empowerment. All three of these organizations have secured physical space to be owned and operated by girls themselves, which is proving to be a key part of the organizations’ sustainability and security, and therefore in the empowerment of girls who will soon be women. Over the next year, the Huairou Commission will be launching a fund for “Our Spaces” to document the space that girls and women’s organizations have obtained and will work to support more girls’ and women’s groups to obtain their own spaces.

Anchoring Grassroots Voices in the Global Women's Movement
Besides organizing this highly successful workshop on the empowerment of adolescent girls, the Huairou Commission was active in the Linkage Caucus. Huairou Commission Coordinating Council members Lily Hutjes and Emmy Galama, who represent the International Council of Women, and Maite Rodriguez from the Women and Peace Network, joined Huairou Chair Jan Peterson in ensuring that grassroots women's perspectives were included at this important political moment for women at the United Nations.

The Huairou Commission signed on to the "Open Letter Regarding Women's/Gender Equality Architecture at the UN from the NGO Linkage Caucus taking part in the 51st Commission on the Status of Women". This open letter, calls upon the UN and its member states to strengthen the architecture for women's equality in the UN, and ensure significant and scaled-up funding for that architecture. The letter also calls for meaningful and on-going participation of Civil Society in the implementation of the Secretary-General's High Level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence. The Huairou Commission is working with the major women's groups to ensure that grassroots women are meaningfully included in the process as well.

We encourage members and partners of the Huairou Commission to sign on. If interested, please contact us and we will put you in touch with the organizers.

Download the open letter here