why girls?
We founded Community Friends around many guiding principles. One of these is attending to the needs of the community’s most needy, its most vulnerable. In every case, this has brought into focus the needs of children and overwhelmingly the needs of adolescent girls.
Conditions of poverty, marginal education and insufficient economic opportunities put adolescent girls in particular peril. Families have difficulty feeding, clothing and educating their young and more often than not its the girls that the families feel it necessary to off-load. And the dismal options that follow are well known.
Seeing these conditions reappear in community after community, it is clear that there cannot be a meaningful turnaround without addressing the plight of girls in poverty.
We aim to achieve this through a combination of economic empowerment, personal awareness and esteem building.