My #GirlChildLongWalk Story: Maria Lígia Conti

Posted by on Oct 18, 2021

As part of our blog series #MyGirlChildLongWalkStory, we are pleased to share this personal story by Maria Lígia Conti from São Paulo, Brazil. Lígia discovered the Girl Child project after googling the word “patriarchy” which led her to our animated explainer video Understanding Our History of Patriarchy: What’s Faith got to do with it? Finding ...

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Welcome to our 2021-2022 Girl Child Long Walk Fellows!

Posted by on Sep 13, 2021

At its core, the Girl Child Long Walk reading journey, the signature effort of the Girl Child Long Walk project, seeks to inspire people all over the world to “put their faith to work through love” to improve the lives of women and girls. After two years of iterating and improving the reading journey, the ...

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The Steps of Progress in the Catholic Church

Posted by on Aug 30, 2021

I would like to thank The Girl Child & Her Long Walk to Freedom team. For many of us participating in the reading journey, this was an amazing experience to learn more about global issues impacting girls and fearless faith-inspired change agents from all walks of life. When I was asked to write something from ...

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Dignity for All: How “Purity Culture” Harms Girls and Women

Posted by on Jul 14, 2021

When I decided to participate in The Girl Child & Her Long Walk to Freedom reading journey, I was anticipating the ways in which it would enrich my current work with Tostan, an African-based international non-profit that empowers communities to develop and achieve their vision for the future and inspires large-scale movements leading to Dignity ...

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She is a Tree of Life to All Who Embrace Her

Posted by on May 6, 2021

In honor of Mother’s Day or Mothering Day, which is celebrated in many places around the world in the month of May, let us give a big hearty salute to our world’s mothers whose love, strength, and care are like a towering tree with deep roots and far reaching branches which hold us in Her ...

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Praying to a Feminine and Masculine Presence

Posted by on May 5, 2021

I like to set aside some time every day to pray, usually in the time after I wake up.  Most mornings, this looks like doing Centering Prayer for 20 minutes, reciting a few favorite prayers, sitting quietly and starting a conversation with God, or all the above. I am an eclectic prayer. When I free-form ...

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One Step at a Time

Posted by on May 4, 2021

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” — Ruth Bader Ginsberg The Girl Child and Her Long Walk to Freedom book opened my eyes to the oppression of the Girl Child. I was raised in a family that valued my sister and myself just as much as my brother. I was encouraged ...

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Redeeming Women’s Stories

Posted by on May 4, 2021

In a small, war-torn, West African nation, sweat began pouring off my brow. The temperature in the room hovered around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but tensions rose as I facilitated a new course we had just written called, “Women and Men Leading Together.” Attending was a small group of local Christian leaders and a few pastors.  Even ...

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“Now what?” The Girl Child Action Maps

Posted by on Apr 6, 2021

As our team surveyed and interviewed participants in the 2018–2019 Girl Child & Her Long Walk to Freedom reading journey pilot, we heard loud and clear that they wanted to know, “now what?” With heads and hearts full of new data and stories, participants were eager to do something: to share, to continue to learn, ...

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The Girl Child in 2020

Posted by on Feb 10, 2021

Dear Friends, Happy New Year to you and yours!  We hope that this new year finds you safe, healthy and in peace. 2020 was quite a painful and challenging year for all of us as the pandemic brought the world to its knees, and the Black Lives Matter movement mobilized droves of multicultural stakeholders in ...

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Patriarchy in My First Language – Mfumo dume

Posted by on Nov 16, 2020

As a development specialist, I have come across many forms of Patriarchy. In Kiswahili, the word Patriarchy means “mfumo dume ” or male system. In the Southern Highlands of Tanzania where I now live and work, mfumo dume means much more than the ‘rule of men over women’. It is even more than the web ...

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In the Spirit of Two Notorious Giants who Left us in 2020, Join us for some “Good Trouble” this Fall

What a notorious year 2020 has been, one we will all remember for how it has turned our lives upside down. The word “notorious” is actually a perfect word for this year as it is one of those vague words, like “interesting”, which can evoke both positive and negative sentiments.  As Merriam-Webster dictionary describes, “Although ...

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Echoes of Patriarchy in our Climate Crisis

Posted by on Sep 18, 2020

As some of the worst climate wildfires we’ve ever seen rage through California, Oregon, and Washington right now, we’re feeling called to pause and reflect as people of faith.  As we’ve continued trekking along and inviting others to join us on this journey, we’ve heard reverberations of the same theme: I care about the Girl ...

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My #GirlChildLongWalk Story: Dr. Jackie Ogega

Posted by on Aug 9, 2020

When I was a little girl, I watched my mama tear her wedding pictures into pieces. The pictures had been beautifully displayed on the wall in our house, depicting my mama and father looking crazy in love and happy. I couldn’t understand why my mother would tear up these pictures, the only evidence of beauty ...

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Walking with the Girl Child through the Shadows of COVID-19

Posted by on Aug 9, 2020

When news about the local outbreak of infectious pneumonia of an unknown etiology hit headlines in December 2019, most here in Kenya viewed this with skepticism. Never would we have imagined that what we thought was just a small localized infection was in fact a global health pandemic spreading its tentacles around the world. Never ...

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Join our 2020-21 Reading Journey to Put Faith to Work through Love for our World’s Girls

Posted by on Aug 8, 2020

What matters is faith working through love. ~ Galatians 5:6 (HCSB)

If you find your curiosity piqued and a movement of love arising in your heart to see more of and better understand this ancient yet very contemporary gender-based legacy of slavery – which has its own monuments we need to take down – we invite you to consider joining our 2020–21 #GirlChildLongWalk “reading journey” cohort. The reading journey begins on October 11, International Day of the Girl Child, and runs through March 8, International Women’s Day.

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Put Your Pandemic Angst to Work

Posted by on Aug 7, 2020

These are opportune times to transmute the energy of angst into actions that deepen our insight. ~ Dr. Kamilah Majied, mental health therapist, educator, and consultant on inclusivity and contemplative pedagogy and practice. Visit her website at joyfullyjust.com.

Though the pandemic has been unfolding and wreaking its havoc in varying degrees and timelines, we are all collectively emerging into a drastically different world than the pre-COVID-19 one we left behind a few months ago. Between the massive economic impacts and the more recent anti-racism protests and Confederate monuments being taken down, we are living through a time where change is happening right before our eyes. As we have watched the taken-for-granted structures of our world crumble, many have felt a renewed sense of shared human purpose and urgency to lean in and do our part individually to care for the whole and recreate a new normal that is more just and life-giving than the world we left behind.

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Learn about the Ancient Gendered Roots of Slavery in Our New Patriarchy “Splainer” Video – 10,000 Years Condensed into less than 5 Minutes!

Posted by on Aug 7, 2020

The truth will set you free. ~ Jesus in John 8:32 (DARBY)

In the spirit of truth telling, we have been busy working on a tool—a five-minute animated “splainer” video called “Understanding Our History of Patriarchy: What’s faith got to do with it?” – which we hope will add value to the larger gender justice ecoystem and help friends and partners like you tell the truth about the ancient patriarchal roots of slavery. We created this video in partnership with animator Ruben DeLuna and communications strategy firm Do Good Better, which has also been supporting us to reboot and upgrade this reading journey.

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“Flatten the Curve” of an Ancient Pandemic within the Pandemic: Gendercide

Posted by on Aug 6, 2020

You cannot dismantle what you cannot see. You cannot challenge what you do not understand. ~ Layla F. Saad in Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

Living within and alongside both the global pandemic of COVID-19 and our world’s racial injustices is another oppression that is being laid bare: a deeply rooted misogyny, which is the fruit of an ancient social system called “patriarchy,” aka “male supremacy.” Because this form of human subjugation goes back millennia to the cradles of what we know as “modern civilization,” and because it is laced with so many traditional and sacred cows that make it appear virtuous and just the way things are, we have not yet as a society fully named patriarchy for what it truly is—the oldest, most enduring root of slavery. Patriarchy is where the human family first began normalizing the unnatural, immoral, and inhumane notion that one human being could own and subjugate another as property.

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