SNIPPETS OF INSPIRATION
In this ad hoc series of blogs, I offer some thoughts on the people, campaigns and sometimes poems that inspire me. This week – in honour of the International Day of the Girl Child coming up on Friday (11th October) – I’d like to share with you three campaigns or movements that you might want to consider supporting and some immediate thoughts on how to show your support.
UNICEF
OK, so UNICEF doesn’t work exclusively with girls but I have a soft spot for the organisation that gave me my first job after Parliament and crystallised my desire to change the world. So bear with me! The core areas of UNICEF’s work are:
- Nutrition and life-saving food: 200 million children’s lives are currently at risk as a result of malnutrition and UNICEF provides 80% of the world’s life-saving food
- Education: every day more than 61 million children do not attend primary school. In 2016 UNICEF supplied school books and other learning materials to 15.7 million children around the world.
- Emergency relief: When war breaks out or disaster strikes, children lose their schools, their homes, their families and become more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. In 2017 alone, UNICEF responded to 337 humanitarian emergencies in 102 countries.
- Protection from climate change: Every year, environmental factors take the lives of 1.7 million children under five and by 2040, 600 million children (1 in 4) will be living in areas affected by severe drought.
- Water, sanitation and hygiene: 5 billion people in the world lack safely managed sanitation and diseases resulting from poor water and sanitation kill 800 children every day. UNICEF is working with Governments in more than 113 countries to build water, sanitation and hygiene systems that are safe and will last.
- Vaccines: Every day, 16,000 children under five die of diseases like measles, polio, tetanus, TB, diptheria and whooping cough as a result of having no access to basic vaccinations. these diseases. Unicef provides vaccines to immunise almost half of the world’s children against preventable diseases.
UNICEF is one of the only UN agencies that does not receive mandatory funding from the UN or member governments – and is therefore entirely reliant on voluntary donations from governments, organisations and individuals. As a result it is, in my opinion, one of the best and most efficiently run of the major UN agencies.
UNICEF is one of the only UN agencies that does not receive mandatory funding from the UN or member governments – and is therefore entirely reliant on voluntary donations from governments, organisations and individuals. As a result it is, in my opinion, one of the best and most efficiently run of the major UN agencies.
If you’d like to support their work with girls AND boys around the world, you can:
1. Make a donation: https://www.unicef.org.uk/donate/
2. Support the #Survivepast5 campaign and sign the UNICEF petition calling on Boris Johnson to fight for children: https://act.unicef.org.uk/page/45317/petition/1?ea.tracking.id=uuk-website&_ga=2.164602106.43404469.1570206456-1401690364.1570206456
3. Encourage your company to become a corporate partner: https://www.unicef.org.uk/corporate-partners/become-a-corporate-partner/
SheDecides
SheDecides is a global movement campaigning for a new normal: a world in which every girl, every woman has the right to decide what to do with her body, without question. SheDecides was created as an urgent response to President Trump’s reinstatement and dramatic expansion of the Global Gag Rule in January 2017. The Global GAG rule prevents NGOs outside the US from receiving money from the US government if they provide safe abortions or even just simple information about abortion. The impact of this policy has had a devastating effect on women, girls and their communities around the world.
Outraged by one bad policy, Friends of SheDecides soon recognised that it is societal norms as well as bad laws and bad policies that have a detrimental impact on women and girls around the world. And so, as the movement has grown its focus has become to change social norms, laws and policies and unlock resources.
The SheDecides manifesto explains their stance so much more eloquently than I ever could, so here it is in full:
When She Decides, the world is better, stronger, safer.
She Decides whether, when, and with whom.
To have sex.
To fall in love.
To marry.
To have children.
She has the right.
To information, to health care, to choose.
She is free.
To feel pleasure.
To use contraception.
To access abortion safely.
To decide.
Free from pressure.
Free from harm.
Free from judgement and fear.
Because when others decide for her, she faces violence, forced marriage, oppression.
She faces risks to her health, to her dignity, to her dreams, to her life.
When she does not decide, she cannot create the life she deserves, the family she wants, a prosperous future to call her own.
We – and you, and he, and they – are uniting. Standing together with her so she can make the decisions only she should make.
Political leadership and social momentum are coming together like never before.
But we can go further, and we can do more.
From today, we fight against the fear.
We right the wrongs.
We mobilise political and financial support.
We work to make laws and policies just.
We stand up for what is right.
Together, we create the world that is better, stronger, safer.
But only if. And only when.
She Decides.
If you’d like to show your support for SheDecides then step one is to sign the manifesto here: https://www.shedecides.com/manifesto/
Girls not Brides
Girls Not Brides is a global partnership of more than 1300 civil society organisations committed to ending child marriage and enabling girls to fulfil their potential. Every year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18. That is 23 girls every minute.
- Girls with no education are three times more likely to marry by 18 than those with a secondary or higher education.
- Over 60% of women aged 20-24 with no education were married before they were 18.
- Complications in pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death in girls aged 15-19 globally.
- Girls who marry before 15 are 50% more likely to face physical or sexual violence from a partner.
If you would like to help bring an end to child marriage. Here are three simple things you can do:
1. Sign this petition: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/World_Leaders_Stop_stealing_her_childhood_tell_world_leaders_to_protect_girls_from_child_marriage/details/
2. Share the facts:
On 11th October – or any other day for that matter! – copy, paste and share one of the following facts on your social media:
Every year, 12 million girls are married before their 18th birthday. They all have a story to tell https://bit.ly/13FljsP
#Childmarriage threatens the health, education and rights of every girl. Ending #childmarriage will benefit us all https://bit.ly/14dPn0U
#DidyouKnow? Over 650 million women alive today were married before the age of 18. #Childmarriage must end NOW! https://bit.ly/16rvt47
The bigger picture? A world without #childmarriage & where girls are empowered. How do we get there? Here’s how: https://bit.ly/1wY9w9qhttps://bit.ly/1wY9w9q
3. Support a project:
Go to Women’s WorldWideWeb and donate to one of the many projects listed there with a view to ending child marriage: https://www.w4.org/en/
There are hundreds of potential campaigns you could support, hundreds of ways in which to make your voice heard on the issues affecting girls (and women) around the world These are the three that I know most about but if none of these inspire you, I would urge you to do some research and find one campaign, one organisation or one charity that you can show your support for on International Day of the Girl Child.
We can all make a difference. We can all have an impact. We can all change the world.
So let’s do it. Let’s ACTUALLY make a difference!
Sara Price
Founder, Actually
October 2019
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week I wrote a newsletter that caused more people to unsubscribe from my list than almost anything I have ever written before. I'm not concerned - clearly they are not my people - but I thought I'd share it here so you can tell me: would this cause YOU to unsubscribe?
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"Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels."
I remember the first time I heard that quote.
I was in my teens. I laughed.
Then as I began to think seriously about my career, my Mum explained to me that to be a successful career woman meant working twice as hard as a man to be considered half as good (and paid half as much).
I was in my early twenties. I thought she was exaggerating.
After I burnt out for the second time, I went to a conference and listened to a passionate and eloquent woman - who has subsequently become a great friend - explain something that should have been utterly obvious to me: that our entire cultural paradigm is based on structures set up by men and for men.
I was in my forties. And I cried.
Because it is exhausting having to don your Superwoman cape every day to ‘compete’ in the workplace.
As a single woman, I didn’t have to juggle work with family.
As a white, middle-class, cis-gendered, heterosexual and mainly able-bodied woman, I wasn’t dealing with the raft of intersectional prejudices beyond your average, everyday sexism.
But I was still exhausted.
And it wasn’t just because the systems that we work within weren’t designed for women but for men who had stay-at-home wives doing all of the work in the home.
It’s because for me - as for so many women - every day was and is a balancing act.
Every day is a tightrope walk between safety and danger; between being listened to and dismissed; between familiarity and harassment; between authenticity and playing the game.
Every day is a fight to be seen, to be heard, to be respected, to be autonomous, to be considered, to be valued, to be safe.
Every day.
In the workplace, in our social spaces, in our homes, in our politics, in our media.
Everywhere.
This week my friend and client Harriet Waley-Cohen shared a post about this on LinkedIn. I’m going to share a section of her post here because she has put this so much more eloquently than I could:
"Sometimes it amazes me that there isn't a massive uprising.
Women are fed up of being objectified and judged on our looks, and only respected by how fu*&able we are deemed to be.
We are exhausted by feeling unsafe everywhere we go and watching our backs.
We are exasperated with not being paid the same, of our careers, choices and finances being marginalised because of caring expectations.
We are in despair about our allegations against powerful men being ignored because these men are too valuable to be held to account.
We are done with being told our tone of voice is the bloody problem, that we are too emotional.
We have had enough of not being able to trust the police or the legal system, and of people saying 'innocent until proven guilty' when the stats for prosecutions are laughably low and we all know most rapists never face any real consequences.
We are fed up of being told that it's not all men, because we never said it was, and it hurts to see so few men actively working towards making things better."
There has been an outpouring of grief, support and righteous anger in the comments on Harriet’s post. Of course there has. Because this is nearly every woman’s lived experience. And it is not OK.
I have written about these issues before in this newsletter. In the wake of the Sarah Everard murder and after the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade. And there’s a part of me that didn’t want to write about this again. A part of me was concerned that you - my wonderful community - would grow bored of me ‘ranting on’ about this issue. A part of me that feared being judged or dismissed.
And that’s exhausting too, right?
The constant self-censorship. The constant voice in my head telling me that I can’t say this, shouldn’t write about that, mustn’t be too emotional, too strident, too ‘shouty’.
Well, in the nicest possible sense: f*&k that.
I am in my fifties now and as tired as some people may be of hearing me talk about these things, trust me I am WAY more tired of still having to talk about them. But until there is equity, it is up to every one of us to keep ‘banging on’.
And we need to do more than rant, we need to ACT.
Because here’s the thing, whatever your gender, you can either be an ally or you can be complicit in the problem. Please choose to be an ally. Here are three things you can do:
- Support people like Harriet when they share publicly about these issues. This kind of content often attracts trolls and the ‘not all men’ brigade - and it can be overwhelming to have to do all the rebuttal yourself. Another friend and client - the fabulous Stephanie Aitken, also did a post this week on a related topic and spent many hours having to deal with trolls in the comments. Help them.
- Call out misogyny, sexism, harassment, prejudice and bigotry when you see it - and when you feel safe to do so. I’m not advocating that you intervene when doing so would put you in real physical danger. But if a colleague makes an off-colour remark; if a family member behaves in a way that is inappropriate; if a friend displays ignorance, aggression or bias: name it. Don’t just smile and secretly roll your eyes. Don’t dismiss it. Don’t be afraid to be ‘awkward’. Have the conversation.
- Engage the next generation. Several of the commenters on Harriet’s post talked about children watching violent porn. They shared stories of how boys’ attitudes to girls are in some cases worse now than they were when I was a teen. The murder of Elianne Andam this week makes it clear just how important it is to speak to our children about these issues. Talk to the young people in your life. Find out about their experiences. Give them a safe space to explore these issues. And educate them about respect and equity. If we are going to break this cycle, this is VITAL work. Don’t shy away from it.
There is so much more that we could all be doing but this would be an amazing start!
OK. Rant over, for today.
I’m not promising I won’t come back to this again.
My most fervent wish is that there will come a day when it won’t be necessary.
I hope to see that day in my lifetime.
My biggest fear is that I will not.
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I think that will do for now - I do hope it has been helpful!
Big love
Sara
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