Sections

Around the world, the United Nations Foundation knows girls just like you—except they have never seen a school or a doctor; they have a 50 percent chance of getting physically attacked before they turn 15; they are working dangerous, dirty, and definitely adult jobs; and their own countries don’t even know they exist.

We are already mobilizing everyone from top UN agencies to individual teens to reach our girls (read more about the Coalition for Adolescent Girls and the UN Adolescent Girls Task Force). And now we’ve created the Girl Up campaign so you can stand up for them too.

With Girl Up, you can join the fight for every girl’s right to be respected, educated, healthy, safe, and ready to rule the future.

Just like you.

Education can change a girl’s future.

Worldwide, 143 million school-aged kids are not in school. More than half are girls. In some countries, like Liberia, most girls drop out before they get to the sixth grade. In other places, like sub-Saharan African, millions of girls never even enroll in the first place.

Getting girls in school is about more than making sure everyone reads To Kill a Mockingbird before she turns 16. In many impoverished countries, a girl in school is a girl not selling fruit at a roadside stand or working as a live-in servant far from home. A girl in school can find meals, maybe see a nurse, and get the skills she needs to get a decent job -- and the independence that brings -- in her future.

Access to health services helps girls thrive.

In developing countries, most girls never receive a check-up or see a doctor.  Medical care costs too much. And even if they can afford it, they often cannot find a doctor or nurse within many miles of their homes.

Girls need decent health care to stay well, definitely, but also to stay alive.  One in seven girls in the developing world marries before she turns 15. Half of the girls in the least developed countries have a baby before they turn 20.

Girl Up gets girls to doctors in countries like Ethiopia and Guatemala, making sure they receive an annual check up along with the information they need to stay healthy, and alive. 

 

Keeping girls safe is a global issue.

We want girls everywhere to be safe from violence, especially sexual violence. But they are not. In fact, almost 50 percent of all sexual assaults are against girls 15 or younger.

In developing countries, being a girl, and young, and poor means there is a good chance that someone may attack you. Poor girls are often sent away to work adult jobs. Sometimes, far from the protections of home or school, adult workers abuse them. Sometimes, the adult jobs the girls are promised turn out not to be a jobs at all, but forced prostitution.

Even girls who get to stay home are not necessarily safe. In some areas of the world, girls need to spend up to 15 hours a day just getting clean water for their family. That is 15 hours they are on isolated roads, vulnerable to attack.

Through Girl Up, you can support UN programs to keep girls safe, including one to build wells so girls can get water close to home.

 

Girls are the next generation of leaders.

With Girl Up, you speak for girls who do not have a voice…yet.

In many developing countries, a girl may have to marry young and take care of her older husband and her own babies. She might have to stay home and take care of younger siblings and household chores. She might have to go to work in someone else’s house and take care of their siblings, or chores, or babies, or old husband. That does not leave a girl a lot of time to have her say.

Ninety percent of the worldwide domestic workforce -- that is, maids and nannies and cooks and laundresses -- are girls under 16. Ninety percent.

Through Girl Up, we encourage girls' independence, running classes on handling their own money or speaking in public. We position them as leaders, empowering them to speak for girls everywhere. 

Girls count.

Girl Up is not just about making sure girls are heard: we want to make sure they are seen too.

In some developing countries, the government does not know that many of their girls exist. They have no ID, no social security number, no passport, no birth certificate, nothing that shows they are alive. In Ethiopia, only seven percent of girls’ births are even registered.

And because these girls are not counted, they are not getting the services they are due, the aid they need, the education they deserve, and the protection that is their right. 

In Guatemala and Ethiopia, Girl Up is getting girls ID cards, making sure the world knows they are here.