Aims and activities
Aims and questions
Aims and activities
Empowering Her Voice is a collaboration of funders mobilising resources and learning together on adolescent girl leadership, youth protagonism and ecosystems of support.
Aims:
- Advance girl leadership and meaningful youth participation with community-based groups across three continents
- Demystify participatory approaches to encourage and support uptake by more actors.
Initial learning questions – focusing on advancing practice and strengthening ecosystems:
- What are the best methodologies centring (younger, middle and older adolescent) girls in participatory co-design and organisational decision-making that are effective, thoughtful and meaningful?
- How can funders collaborate supporting girls to be connected across social contexts and geographies to build solidarity and powerful collective voice - representing the multiplicities of girls’ lived realities?
- What are effective ways to collectively support grantee partners to share and learn from each other?
- How can we demystify and amplify learnings from these methodologies to influence, equip and encourage more funders across sectors – including non-expert philanthropies and private sector actors - so that girls’ voices and choices are at the centre of the conversation in philanthropic practice, policy and research?
How to get involved
Peer funders can participate in two activity tracks:
1. Collaboratively funded girl-led programming
Girls supported to lead grant-making engaging community-based groups seeking to advance girl leadership and meaningful youth participation.
Strengthening capacity to ensure grantee partners have knowledge and skills to develop and implement sustainable programmes with and for girls.
2. Learning and Leading
Co-created cycle of continuous learning, action and reflection on:
- advancing meaningful youth engagement and adolescent girl leadership
- strengthening ecosystems.
Demystifying participatory approaches to encourage and support uptake by more actors. Targeting global philanthropy and development fora and major events at which to elevate the voices of girl and youth leaders to promote the wider uptake of participatory methodologies.
To get involved or find out more, contact David Crook at EMpower, The Emerging Markets Foundation: dcrook@empowerweb.org
Who's involved
Who was involved
Who was involved
EMpower, Ford Foundation, Arisaig Partners, Edelgive, Porticus
Learning and Resources
EMpower has invested in adolescent girl leadership work since 2006, particularly in India. Our current program strategy in India was defined by girls themselves, and our girl-led research captures findings and actionable recommendations girls have put forward across seven Indian cities.
Our newly updated in-depth “Learning Communities” program models provide a comprehensive 250 page “how to” guide, which we have utilised to bring the programs to different regions – thrice ourselves in Mumbai (2012), Delhi (2017) and Rajasthan (2022) and twice in partnership with other organisations adopting our models in Bangladesh and Nepal.
Our report on youth protagonism, co-authored with Dasra, shares knowledge and resources to move the ecosystem closer to achieving true youth leadership. And our upcoming joint publication with NITI Aayog on non-traditional livelihoods opportunities for girls shows the potential outcomes that can be achieved by investing in young people in this way.
The Empowering Her Voice initiative will engage adolescent girls and youth across 15 countries, leveraging our Girls Advisory Council methodology as well as the aforementioned Learning Communities model.
