In April 2020 we had plans to run our sixth exchange programme, involving bringing girls from all over the world to Nepal for leadership learning, programme development experience, and cultural exchange with our Founding Director Julia Lynch.
“In 2020 we had plans to…”. We all now know what follows that phrase. In early 2020 we postponed the Exchange a number of times, not knowing, in the early days of the pandemic, how long travel would be restricted for. During this postponement, and once the Exchange was later cancelled, Julia worked with our girls online, adapting the programme and providing them a version of the learning they would have experienced in person. Like many other organisations, this was a new experience and a new challenge for us and for our girls.
Three of these girls were from Sri Lanka and in this blog, we spoke to Darshan Ambalavanar, the Director from our exchange partner in Sri Lanka, who worked with the girls about the impact they experienced and the importance of the programme, despite the initial disappointment of not being able to travel to Nepal.
As Darshan puts it: “Programs which focus on empowering girls from non-privileged backgrounds are of great need here in Sri Lanka as they face many barriers to developing their own life.” Programmes like those run by Global Girl Project which “build confidence through learning experiences are very important, [and] given many of the issues around social discrimination it is important for them to have opportunities of learning together with young girls from different backgrounds.”
Global Girl Project was able to offer a unique opportunity to the girls we worked with, and despite having to make adjustments, Darshan is clear about the impact the work had on the girls: it was their first experience of online learning, which would come to be an incredibly important skill as the Covid-19 pandemic took off; it gave them an opportunity to practise resilience, through dealing with the disappointment of not going to Nepal, and the ongoing commitment to the programme, even though it meant travelling 40km to attend; and it built their confidence hugely.
So much so, that Darshan is clear of the impact the programme has had on the paths the girls have taken since participating, with two girls committed to attending university, the first to do so in their community. Both girls want to train to be English teachers, and when we began with them in the Exchange programme they had had very limited exposure to English. As part of their preparation for the Exchange, and as part of their engagement with Julia we provided English tutoring for the girls, something which they have now run with and been inspired to continue developing and to share this skill with others.
We see over and over again the impact that unleashing the power of girls in their community and within themselves can have, and continue to inspire us to do more, for more girls, in more communities.