Global Girl Media: This is Our World, My Voice (via HuffPost Impact)

Here’s the portion of an article from Huffington Post by Tabby Biddle about Global Girl Media, an organization that helps girls all over the world share stories through blogs and other social media. For the full story, click here.

What if the voices of young women in communities around the world dominated global media? How would our world be different?

I recently had the opportunity to work with eight young women from East Los Angeles in a media-training program aimed at bringing out these voices. It’s called Global Girl Media.

This year Global Girl Media provided training to eight teenage girls from underserved communities in Los Angeles and 10 HIV-positive girls from Soweto, South Africa.

In South Africa, the girls created video, blog and mobile reports on issues related to HIV/AIDS, gender violence, life in the townships and South African culture. One of the young women, Annah Tseko, was even singled out by Michele Obama during her trip to South Africa, and held her up as a model leader in her community.

In Los Angeles, the girls learned interviewing, camera and sound skills, as well as how to write blogs and use social media. They are currently shooting, writing and producing stories on teen pregnancy, obesity, sex trafficking, and an alternative school in Los Angeles that is thriving in the midst of the budget crisis. The Global Girls’ work will be featured in an exhibition focused on women’s and girls’ rights globally at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles in October. They have also been invited to guest blog for Women’s Campaign International.

“Today we interviewed a 14-year-old girl who lives in downtown LA who has a 2-year-old child. This means she got pregnant at age 12! I was blown away, horrified, actually, until I watched the gentleness and attentiveness with which our Global Girl Reporter interviewed her. There was no judgment, there were no leading questions, just a genuine interaction with this young girl’s experience caring for her child. It truly humbled me, and reinforced in a profound way why I think these sorts of stories, told from the directly affected, unaltered by outsiders, can be transformative.” - Amy Williams, Executive Director of Global Girl Media