TRANSFORMING GIRLS' LIVES. EVERYWHERE.
Too often girls around the world are left out of conversations about the issues that impact them most. But at Rise Up, we know that girls can be powerful agents of change, so we center our work around girls’ voices and leadership. We support girls to understand their rights and raise their voices, and we invest in their strategies to mobilize their communities to advance health, education, and equity. By strengthening girls’ leadership and advancing their impact, Rise Up is building a pipeline of future leaders and a global movement of girls who advocate for their own priorities.
Key successes of Rise Up’s girl-centered advocacy include:
- Outlawing child marriage to protect 7.5 million girls in Malawi and Guatemala
- Ensuring girls’ health, safety, and education in Liberia through passage of the National Children’s Law, impacting 2 million children
- Banning female genital mutilation (FGM) in Kajiado County, Kenya, improving sexual and reproductive health and rights for 150,000 girls
- Improving indigenous Guatemalan girls’ access to education with increased government funding and support for girls’ education and healthcare
PROVEN MODEL FOR GIRL-CENTERED ADVOCACY
Rise Up supports girl leaders and local organizations to guarantee girls’ rights through girl-centered advocacy. Starting in 2009, with our Let Girls Lead program, Rise Up has contributed to improved health, education, and livelihoods for more than 40 million girls across the globe, through the passage and implementation of laws, policies, and programs that guarantee girls’ rights. And our award-winning Girl-Centered Guide to Advocacy curriculum engages girls and their allies in strategic advocacy and enables our partners to build a better life for girls everywhere. We also developed a Girls’ Voices Curriculum, in partnership with Girl Up, for adolescent girls who want to make change in their own community and be part of a movement for gender equality.
GIRLS' VOICES INITIATIVE
Rise Up’s Girls’ Voices Initiative empowers girls to become change agents and develop their own solutions to the challenges they face in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and the U.S.
Rise Up supports girl leaders and their allies to amplify girls' voices, launch girl-led and girl-centered advocacy campaigns, and effectively engage decision-makers to advance girls’ rights. Our initiative is also designed to build the capacity of partner organizations to more effectively support girls’ leadership and integrate girls' priorities meaningfully in their work. Through Rise Up’s curriculum, ongoing support, and funding, our local partners are enabling girls to develop innovative girl-led strategies to improve girls’ health, education, and rights around the world.
Rise Up also helps girls foster life-changing relationships with adult allies through our unique Girl Ally model, which strengthens girls’ leadership and advocacy skills, while building the capacity of adult allies and organizations to effectively engage girl leaders.
To date, hundreds of Rise Up Girl Leaders around the world have strengthened their leadership, learned about their rights, and mobilized thousands of girls in their communities to tackle legal, cultural, economic, and structural obstacles and transform their own lives, communities, and countries.
Rise Up receives support for our girls’ leadership programs from the following institutional funding partners:
The Cummins Foundation, NoVo Foundation, The Summit Foundation, and WestWind Foundation.
