GIRLS Inspire hosted a side event at the Women Deliver Conference on 6 June 2019 in Vancouver, Canada which featured presentations on ‘Stories of Community Engagement: How Social Media Plays a Part in Preventing Child, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM).’

COL’s President and CEO, Professor Asha Kanwar delivered an opening presentation on ‘Empowering girls to prevent Child, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM),’ which highlighted the scope and impact of GIRLS Inspire’s work in Bangladesh, India, Mozambique, Pakistan and Tanzania.

In her presentation, Professor Kanwar showcased stories of girls whose lives have been transformed by GIRLS Inspire’s initiatives through education and skills development using open and distance learning. Boat schools in Bangladesh, mobile learning centres in India and Mozambique, as well as pop-up learning centres in Pakistan were used as examples of education strategies that have helped prevent over 1,000 child marriages and provided over 60,000 women and girls with skills and vocational training.

Senior Adviser: Women and Girls, Ms Frances J. Ferreira shared how GIRLS Inspire helped build the capacity of partner organisations and stakeholders to collect and share compelling human-interest stories on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. She said “Real success stories shared on social media have changed people’s mindsets and promoted awareness on the importance of education to prevent CEFM. We capitalised on important days such as International Women’s day, Human Rights Day and 16 Days Against Gender Violence by engaging in social media campaigns using quizzes and polls, writing special blogs, or organising webinars to observe these days and making video posts.”

Social media campaign results were also shared to highlight how videos can be used to engage stakeholders and raise awareness.

Read the presentations by Professor Kanwar and Ms Ferreira here.