‘The Girl Effect’ is the term coined to describe the positive chain reaction that results from the way women invest their money. In the developing world, girls and women who earn an income reinvest 90% of it into their families (as compared to only 30-40% for a man). This leads to positive ripple effects, such as healthier babies and better quality of life for all. The Nike Foundation created The Girl Effect campaign in order to support adolescent girls who are proven to be the most likely agents of change, despite the fact they’re often invisible to their societies and mainstream media. Females were centre stage at this year’s Davos in a plenary session that included Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director of the World Bank; Ann Veneman, executive director of Unicef; Melinda Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And at the U.N. in March, around International Women’s Day, the interagency task force on adolescent girls promised to increase efforts to include girls in development programs. Girls and young women are starrting to be seen as the centerpiece of sustainable economic recovery.


Thanks to Jon Miller for this story.


References:
Business Week

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 8:32 am and is filed under One to Ponder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.