Marking International Day of the Girl

At the United Nation’s initiative, October 11 has been marked as the International Day of the Girl. This year’s theme for the global campaign was With Her: A skilled GirlForce. Therefore, Save the Children Georgia Country Office decided to celebrate the event by undertaking two types of events. Namely, alongside with a week-long social media campaign aimed at raising awareness of girls and a larger community about the challenges faced by women and girls in Georgia and elsewhere around the world, we also decided to tap into the intellectual resources of school girls by enabling them to decide upon the topic and a manner of celebrating the day. Girls attending Gardabani School N1 were eager to use the creative freedom provided to them and decided to stage a set of performances featuring topics that are perceived as the main challenges faced by girls in Georgia. Namely, they focused on early and forced marriage and its destructive effects upon mental and physical health, education and career prospects of girls. This performance turned out to be particularly thought-provoking, since bride kidnapping is still practiced in Georgia – just few days ago a 17 year old girl was forcefully removed from her own house and abducted for the purpose of forced marriage.

Another topic presented by the school children concentrated on the impact of domestic abuse upon the wellbeing of children.

Girls not only led the process of staging the performances, but demonstrated substantial knowledge of Georgian legislation and international conventions (particularly, the Convention on the Rights of the Child) that ensure effective realization of the rights of the girls.

This child-led awareness raising activity demonstrated the importance of cooperation with all girls to magnify existing learning opportunities, outlining new pathways for their development and calling on the global community to rethink how to mitigate the risks they are facing and equip girls with skills for success.