Zack Fowler is the Head of Strategic Partnerships for AMPLIFY Girls, an international collective of community-driven organizations that are investing in raising girls’ agency and amplifying their voices. In 2018, Zack was the Executive Director of WISER International, supporting holistic girls’ education in Kenya. Several community-driven organizations had reached “a tipping point of frustration” with their local insights into what worked for girls. Zack said, “They had started initiatives on their back porches in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda.” He explained that they felt they weren’t receiving the respect, attention or resources they deserved because they were small or hyper-local or didn’t have the same exposure to international development that larger organizations had. They met in Rwanda for a brainstorming session to discuss how they could get these organizations – who were focused on changing the lives of adolescent girls – a bigger platform. Zack said the growth was organic, but from those initial 18 founding organizations, AMPLIFY Girls has quickly grown from its humble beginnings five years ago in East Africa to an international collective of more than 40 organizations – all building the agency of young women.
Zack said that the organizations come together with a single goal, “If you can equip girls with a sense of agency, that’s success.” They don’t restrict AMPLIFY Girls partners to any one type of program, but are united and welcoming to others who are changing the lives of girls. Zack himself got into this work as a baseline volunteer working for an organization focused on girls’ education in Kenya. He said that before he knew it, he had been doing the work almost a decade and found that he was, “being dedicated to a cause that I thought was deeply important.” He called it the, “opposite of a commitment problem.” Although his mom was a teacher and he had a lot of female mentors, the real reason he works to amplify girls is practical. It’s a human rights argument. He said that women and girls are at the center of so many different solutions for the world. “If you want communities to thrive, women and girls is a wonderful place to start.”
Clearing Pathways for Girls
Zack said that even though there are obstacles in the way, the girls know where they want to go. It is up to the organizations to clear pathways so they can get there. He mentions Malala as an education success story. Dr. Nancy adds that the biggest obstacle in Africa is that they need women to do the work. The culture doesn’t want to let them take time off to go to school. Zack said that although his experience is limited to East Africa, the partners are visionary in what they want for themselves and their girls. He said, “They know their mission; they know their vision; they know their value systems.” He said that he is inspired every time he hears them speak.
He told a success story about Wiser Girls, one of the organizations based in Kenya that Zack worked for. A girl named Jacqueline was the first to graduate from high school in her family. She wanted to be a doctor but lived in a very remote village 10 miles from Nairobi. No one in the village, prior to Wiser’s existence, had ever gone to college, but Jacqueline did and became the only female to work in a medical lab. Jacqueline told Zack that she went back to her village and saw a group of children bickering on the side of the road and went over to break it up. She found that they were setting up a game like kids do, deciding who got to play what or whom. They were fighting over who got to play Jaqueline because she was a character in their game. Her journey is just one story among hundreds for Wiser Girls, which is only one organization of dozens for AMPLIFY Girls, all which Zack finds very inspiring to think about.
Getting Involved with AMPLIFY Girls
Zack invites people to visit amplifygirls.org for more information or even to e-mail him directly at [email protected].
Zach also offers a new tool that he’s very excited to announce will come out soon. He calls it “one of the world’s first psychometric measures for girls’ agency” and explains that the tool’s development is the result of work with community leaders over the course of five years to better understand how to track changes in girls’ agency levels. He believes they have the tool that can do that and are in the process of making it widely available to anyone who wants to use it for their girl focus programs.
Also, for the first time in its history Women Deliver a major conference for women and girls, is being held in Africa. The global conversation is going on now. To learn more about all the events leading up to the conference, conference registration, and how to get involved, go to Women Deliver 2023.
Listen to or watch this conversation for more success stories and wonderful work of AMPLIFY Girls organizations and follow along on their social channels to keep up to date with their progress and partnering to change the lives of thousands of girls.
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