Our movement is growing. As more and more leaders like you get involved in the fight toward gender equality, it’s an opportunity to enforce – and reinforce – who we are and what we believe in. Over the last 18 months, we’ve named and defined our core values, and made changes to prioritize equity and inclusivity in our movement. As we work together toward gender equality, our core values will be our north star – guiding our decisions and shaping how we come together as a global community.
How did Girl Up put our Core Values together?
In early 2020, what began as an audit of our workplace culture evolved into an effort to refresh our core values and make it reflective of what we hope everyone in our movement will aspire to – passionate action, accountability, and serving the needs of youth in our global community .
With suggestions, feedback, and insights from Girl Up staff, our 2020-2021 Teen Advisory Board, Club leaders, and others, we got to work.
We doubled down on our mission to advance equality by ensuring opportunities for girls – distinctly because girls and women face systemic discrimination and bias worldwide – while also incorporating more inclusive, gender-neutral language to acknowledge that our movement is open to any and everyone.
We link our Core Values to the UN SDGs to better highlight their connection to our global work. We also call out our support of all the important work you – our members – do every day advancing progress and calling for justice on issues that intersect with gender equity. We cannot achieve gender equity without first addressing many of the barriers to equity that are rooted in systemic discrimination and inequality globally.
But defining these values is just the beginning.
What’s next?
The work doesn’t stop here. Now, in community with each of you who helped inspire and inform our values, we get to work living them.
You’ll soon start to see callbacks to our Core Values reflected in our content, programming, and partnerships. We are working to infuse them into every aspect of our work – as a decision-making tool, as a programming resource, and as an ethos. We welcome your continued feedback and invite you to use these Core Values as a tool in your own Girl Up Clubs.
As a community we will continue to push toward equity, equality, and justice together. We hope you’ll join us.
