Global Girl Project: What we GIVE to help GAIN gender equality

By Jules Lynch, Founder and CEO, Global Girl Project

At Global Girl Project, we believe gender equality is not something we can simply promise. It is something we must practise, resource, and protect every day.

As we approach International Women’s Day 2026 and the Give To Gain campaign, I am often asked what our organisation gives in order to help gain gender equality. The honest answer is this. We give power, trust, and sustained investment to marginalised girls and young women from the Global Majority who have long been excluded from leadership, decision-making, and opportunity.

We give and share power, not just platforms

Too often, girls from marginalised communities are invited into spaces where decisions have already been made. Their stories are welcomed, but their leadership is limited. At Global Girl Project, we do something different.

We give girls from the Global Majority the opportunity to connect with and use their own power. 

Not symbolic inclusion, but practical leadership over programmes, campaigns, and community action. For over a decade, we have worked alongside 2000 + girls affected by poverty, displacement, gender-based violence, and structural inequality, supporting them to design and lead solutions rooted in their own lived realities.

This means trusting girls to identify what change looks like in their communities. It means stepping back when needed, and standing alongside them when systems push back. Gender equality cannot be achieved if power remains concentrated in the same hands. It grows when girls are trusted to lead.

As one of our young leaders shared: “This was the first time someone didn’t just listen to my story, but asked me to shape what came next.”

Girls in Uganda participate in the Global Girl Leadership Initiative

We give time, care, and consistency

Gender equality is not built through short-term projects or one-off interventions. It requires time, care, and long-term commitment. At Global Girl Project, we give all three.

Our work with girls is designed as a journey, not a moment. Through the Global Girl Leadership Initiative (GGLI), girls take part in a three-month, locally delivered leadership programme that centres reflection, community action, social justice work and confidence-building. Since 2014, more than 2,000 girls across 18 countries have participated in our programmes, supported by trusted local facilitators delivering sessions in girls’ own languages.

But our commitment does not end at graduation. Through Global Graduates Connect (GGC), over 1,400 graduates remain part of a lifelong global community, staying connected to each other through peer support, mentoring, and shared learning. This ongoing engagement ensures girls are not left behind once a programme ends, but continue to grow, lead, and support one another over time.

We also give something that is often missing in the sector. Consistency. Many of the girls we work with have experienced disrupted education, instability, and unreliable support. By showing up year after year, investing over $100,000 in continued education, supporting 120+ girl-led community action projects, and reaching more than 10,000 community members, we offer something rare and powerful: reliability rooted in care.

Equality cannot flourish in crisis mode alone. It grows in environments where care is not an afterthought, but a foundation.

We give resources where they are rarely placed

Funding for girls’ leadership, particularly for girls living in the Global Majority, remains limited and often conditional. We direct resources straight to girls and the local organisations that support them.

Through small grants, leadership stipends, and programme funding, we ensure girls are not asked to volunteer their labour while others benefit from visibility or outcomes. We believe resourcing girls’ leadership is not charity. It is a necessary investment in sustainable change.

This approach challenges traditional funding models, but it reflects our values. Gender equality cannot be achieved if those most affected by inequality are expected to lead without resources, recognition, or security.

Girls in Nepal building leadership skills through the Global Girl Leadership Initiative

We give a different model of leadership

Perhaps most importantly, we give a different vision of what leadership looks like.

The girls and young women we work with lead collectively. They centre care, collaboration, and accountability to their communities. They understand leadership not as control, but as shared responsibility. Not as hierarchy, but as connection.

These are not “soft skills”. They are transformative core ones.

In a world facing intersecting crises, from conflict to climate change, these leadership models are not optional. They are essential. Gender equality will not be achieved by simply placing more women into systems that were never designed for them to lead within them. It requires reimagining leadership itself.

What donors gain when they give

The Give To Gain campaign reminds us that giving is not one-directional. When donors, partners, and supporters invest in Global Girl Project, they gain insight, impact, and long-term change.

They gain access to leadership models rooted in lived experience. They gain partnerships grounded in trust and accountability. And they gain the opportunity to support solutions that are shaped by those closest to the challenges we are working to solve.

Gender equality is not achieved through charity alone. It is built through shared power, shared learning, and shared commitment and shared funding.

A call to give what truly matters

As we mark International Women’s Day 2026, I invite funders, organisations, and individuals to reflect on what they are willing to give in order to gain gender equality.

At Global Girl Project, we give power, care, time, trust, and funding. And in return, we witness girls stepping into leadership with courage, determination, and compassion.

When girls are supported to lead on their own terms, equality stops being an aspiration and starts becoming a lived reality.

That is what we give. And that is what we all stand to gain.