Blog posts by related to Girls' development

Charity is a basic constituent of today’s economy. Citizen consumers and cultural capitalists are demanding corporate social responsibility and won’t hesitate to punish companies who don’t deliver. So if the money is where the “warm and fuzzy” is, it makes sense that that’s where new businesses continue to emerge.

BucketFeet is the latest in this new wave of businesses blending social purpose with profit. The Chicago-based shoe company, launched just two months ago, operates under the motto, “Buy a Shoe, Build a Community.”

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Chetna Sinha was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

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Chetna Sinha founded the Woman’s bank, Mann Deshi Mahila Sahkari, a micro finance institution that makes loans to women in rural areas. To date, the bank has served more than 27,000 women and enabled more than 40,000 families to buy homes.

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When you started Mann Deshi bank, what strategies did you use to build its success?

When I first went to Bombay to submit applications for loans to women, the license was denied on the grounds that they were illiterate. I was so shocked and nervous, but the women had so much energy and passion.

They just said, “So what? We will learn to read and write.” Their courage captured me. So we came together for classes to read and write for more than three months.

Then, when I was setting up the bank, one of our many ideas for different products was a small savings box. Without asking any of the women, we ordered 5,000 boxes.

The women told us, “It’s my hard earned money that I save by not buying another biscuit for my child. If I keep it in this, my husband will come and break it, and just take it!”

So I learned many times that I have to involve the women in the process. It was also clear that it’s not just about finance or savings, but about giving women control over their assets. [...]

Sarah Degnan Kambou, PhD, was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

by Sarah Degnan Kambou, PhD, president of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)

Iredjourèma was born in 1935 to a traditional healer in Burkina Faso. She was the third of ten children, and lost her mother when she was 12.

As a young girl, Iredjourèma was regarded as a talented, graceful dancer. She was smart, too. But she never had the opportunity to attend school because she was needed to tend the family’s sheep. At 16, Iredjourèma’s family arranged for her to marry a man eight years her senior. She carried nine pregnancies to term, and nearly died giving birth to her youngest child.   

Today, there are more than 50 million child brides like Iredjourèma worldwide, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Child marriage — the practice of marrying girls younger than 18, often to much older men — is a violation of girls’ human rights. It also compromises their education, health, well-being, and productivity. [...]