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>>Maria Eitel: Less than 2% of every development dollar is spent on adolescent girls. So we
aren't missing the mark by a little bit. We're missing the mark by miles and miles because
she's the amplifier of all other issues. So enough about the economics. You all might
have heard about a girl who is eight years old in Yemen who was married to a 40-year-old
man, she died on her wedding night from injuries due to *** trauma. You might Malala who
was shot in the face as she tried to go to school. Or you may have heard of the rapes
in India. All these things are horrendous, and they
have something in common. At that moment, the human potential of those individuals is
completely wiped out. They have another thing in common. They're
not very uncommon. There are 142 million girls who will become
child brides over the next 10 years. That's 38,000 girls a year who will become a child
bride over the next 10 years. We need to stop that for her, and we need
to stop it for the world. So when I was asked to speak about designing
for the future, I wasn't really thinking about a cool new product or even a cool new industry.
I was thinking about how amazing it would be if we could unleash the potential of half
the world's population to really contribute what they can to the world.
They could then design the next cool product, or revolutionize the next industry, create
the next industry. Revolutionize politics. Get involved in any issue. Advance science.
Create art. Write poetry. But they don't have that potential unless we give them that opportunity.
Okay. But how? Okay. That sounds probably pretty exciting, pretty amazing, but the question
is how do you actually do this? So let's get really practical. The first thing
you've got to do is figure out how to transform one life. And we did this in the same way
you would as a business. We treated the girl as a consumer. We went to her one girl at
a time until it was thousands of girls and thousands of hours of listening and talking
and actually including her, truly including her in everything we did, from program design
all the way to measurement and evaluation. And what we found out was how to transform
her life was actually really, really simple. Each of you who are sitting here today got
to Google Zeitgeist and is sitting in this chair because two really simple things happened
to you. When you were a kid, there was some moment where you sort of said, "I'm not so
bad. Actually, I can do something. I've got some potential here. I see there's a chance."
But then something magical happened. For every one of you, someone -- your father, your mother,
your sister, your brother, a friend, or just some random person who happened to notice
what you created -- told you you were special or you had enormous potential or you had something
really unique to contribute. And the contribution of those two things is what makes a person
successful. A sense of their own self. A sense of your self worth. And then an environment
around you that supports you in that and gives you a chance to realize it.
Now, what about an adolescent girl? What does she need to succeed? She needs the exact same
thing. So we call that ignite her, transform her world. She needs to have the experience
of feeling her own self-worth. Wow, I can do something. And then at the same time, something
around her has to support her and conspire with her for her success.
Now, this can happen on a very large scale, as it might have for some of you, or a very
tiny scale as it might have for some of you as well. Something very, very tiny. But this
equation has to happen for success. Now, let's take an example. We'll use Ethiopia.
So in Ethiopia, 52% of girls are married before the age of 15. 21% of girls report that they
have no friends. It's hard to imagine that those girls report
literally zero friends. So we set out with our partners to develop
a program to address these issues. What we did is two things. On one hand, we created
girl club so girls had a sense of support and a place for them to develop their self-worth.
And then we created communities so they could have a dialogue about girls being more valuable
than being traded in marriage at the most important level.
This program has, wherever it's been, there are zero child marriages that have occurred
before the age of 15. And now, remember, over half of the girls in this region were being
married before the age of 15. So that sounds pretty great, doesn't it? Sounds like huge
progress and you get pretty excited when that stuff starts to happen.
But there is a huge problem. It's too expensive. And you've got to get to the last girl. You
can't say this is great, we got to 300 girls or 500 or even a thousand. You've got to get
to all of them to know that you've actually succeeded. And so you face the problem of
scale. Now, we figured there had to be another part
of this solution, so we took the insight that we have to work on the demand side as well
as the supply side. And we took the insight that a girl needs connectivity and that child
marriage stands as a unique barrier in her ability to realize her potential. And we worked
with girls directly and created something called Yegna.
Yegna is a teenage girl brand platform, and it starts with a radio drama. We created the
first-ever girl band in Ethiopia. Five diverse girls came together, and they came around
two simple things, the love of music and the desire to talk about and deal with the challenges
they face as girls. The team in Ethiopia designed with girls and
for girls, based on the hypothesis that if -- This is the music.
So these girls -- The music was designed and the radio drama was designed for them to talk
about issues every week, a new song to eventually create a whole album and a dialogue.
Now, in Ethiopia, music is how culture and information is transmitted. So it was the
most culturally relevant way that we could get to girls. And we worked with Ethiopian
musicians and designers and artists and created it, and the results have been pretty phenomenal.
Girls now see, are reporting they have a greater sense of their future and are planning for
it, more importantly. They have increase in social capital. There is an improvement in
boys' and parents' and gatekeepers' perceived value of girls, and not just that, but their
behavior toward girls, which is what we're really looking for. The behavior change is
where it all changes. And most importantly, the cost is realistic
and sustainable. So again, this is really exciting. But again,
it's not enough. It's one girl, it's one community, it's one country, and we've still got to get
to those 250 million adolescent girls. So one last piece before I close. You may
have heard of the Millennium Development Goals. These are the goals to stop poverty. The world
is in the process right now of designing of post 2015 agenda. Now, the way this looks
is we've got a lot of smart people and policymakers in closed rooms, doors, coming up with strategies
and policies and people lobbying them to try to get their favorite issue in.
We thought, well, what if we do this differently. What if we actually, for the first time, included
girls in the design process? What would that actually look like?
Have a look. [ Video playing ]
>>> At the start of the millennium, world leaders wrote a set of development goals to
help end poverty. The goals were well intentioned but they left out someone vital to their success:
The girl. >>> I wish that (indiscernible).
>>> I wish there was no more delinquency. >>> I wish for my country to be well.
>>> Adolescent girls are the future. They have the potential to end poverty before it
starts. And right now, new goals are being written
for the world. This time, the girls' voices must be heard. So for the first time, girls
and policy experts are uniting to write a Girl Declaration that lays out the goals that
we all need to see on the post 2015 agenda. So far we have been to seven countries and
consulted with over 250 adolescent girls who are living in poverty with hundreds more to
come. >>> My dream is (indiscernible).
>>> I want to get more information about sexuality. >>> I wish to be (indiscernible) my husband.
>>> Make my mother a good bride. >>> The voices were taken to the Women Deliver Conference in Kuala Lumpur
giving delegates a rare chance to hear them speak under the girl tree.
250 voices representing the 250 million girls living in poverty today.
>>> Safe, healthy, educated girls grow into strong women who transform the world.
>>> The more that we can get
girls stating their dreams, their aspirations, their ambitions, the better we are all be.
>>> If we don't obsess about the adolescent girl, she simply is not included.
>>> So it's critical to invest in girls. Right now
we need girls around the world to be using their voice. >>> Over
the coming months the Girl Declaration will be defined as hundreds more girls are consulted
in seven new countries. Their lives are all different but their needs are strikingly similar
and their voices are being unified in the goals of the Girl Declaration. Read all about
it and show your support online right now. We want to make those voices so loud the whole
world will sit up and pay attention. [ Video ends ]
>>Maria Eitel: So each of you can be a part of this as we try to get policymakers to include
girls. The girls really need your support, so you can go to girleffect.org and join in
if you feel like it. So what's my point today? Three simple things.
First, the best way to design for the future is to go upstream and unleash the most important
thing on the planet, which is human potential, whether in your business or your family or,
in this case, the power of adolescent girls to transform the world.
Secondly, choose something that will cause transformative, seismic change, instead of
incremental progress. For too long we have been okay with incremental progress.
And three, be ridiculously ambitious and just get it done.
So I hope this picture now has some new meaning for you, and you just might consider that
we can solve poverty before it starts in the first place; that you might just consider
that the adolescent girl in poverty is the most and best investment on the planet today
if we want to create transformative change in every area. Because when she wins, we win.
So on behalf of every adolescent girl in poverty, all 250 million of them, thank you.
[ Applause ]