By Kate Kiama, She’s the First Director of Programs & Impact

In July, She’s the First held the sixth iteration of the Girls First Summit in Nairobi. After two years of connecting virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the excitement of the return of a physical Girls First Summit was palpable. The Girls First Summit convenes organizations for knowledge-sharing and targeted training, with local and global insights on best practices for supporting girls’ rights. This year, the full-day summit brought together 78 practitioners from 49 organizations. Practitioners were drawn from 7 different countries which included Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, India, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia.

The day’s session began with Girl Hour, She’s the First proven methodology of centering girl voices in conferences. We know that girls are the experts of their own experiences and that they know better than anyone what their needs are, where the obstacles lay, and how programs can fall short of fulfilling the needs. The girl experts responded to participants' questions which they had submitted prior to attending the summit. The themes addressed included; teenage pregnancy, harmful cultural practices, mental health, and how to better support adolescent girls living with disabilities.

The girl experts resounding feedback to practitioners were that girls want to be informed, and want comprehensive sex education provided to them by people they trust, like their parents, guardians, teachers, and counselors. The experts further avered that girls are inspiring and want to be given chances to excel in the pursuit of their happiness; whatever they perceive them to be and want their communities to support them. The experts further demanded to be kept safe at school, at home, and online and demanded swift justice for those whose fundamental rights have been violated particularly during the COVID-19 period.

Practitioners subsequently participated in a plenary session that explored how to take a girl-centered approach to traditional risk mitigation and management strategies. The session also provided practical learnings on how to adapt a safeguarding mitigation tool that can be used to mitigate risk factors specific to girls. At the height of the pandemic, She’s the First designed the girl-centered risk register which the session explored. Practitioners at the Girls First Summit were instrumental in enriching the tool further and the same has now been updated following key recommendations from the practitioners which a majority intimated they would be using at their CBOs.

Lastly, practitioners were invited to attend one of two parallel sessions. The parallel sessions were intended for participants to have deeper conversations on various concepts of girl-centered methodology and principles around Feminist Mentorship and on Listening to Girls. Practitioners were each availed physical copies of the toolkits She’s the First has developed for each of the sessions.

Practitioners who attended the Feminist mentorship session interrogated the nuances between different mentorship styles and contrasted them with the coaching, tutoring, and sponsorship models. Participants shared experiences, ideas, and strategies that they can use to design and enhance their own mentorship that works within their own context. Participants also committed to working with their mentees in this process.

For the Listening to Girls session, practitioners also shared best practices and recommendations on how to most effectively use focus groups to integrate girls’ voices into their programming. They explored ways to create mechanisms to get girls' voices and insight throughout their program design, implementation and evaluation stages. Practitioners committed to being intentional about listening to girls and tied the first session of the day with the commitment to see girls as the experts they are!

Our Programs team will check up on all attendees in three months' time to better understand what changes they have made in their organizations as a result of attending the Girls First Summit. All participants have been invited to remain engaged by joining the Girls First Network, a platform where girls' rights organizations from across the world share best practices, advocacy and funding opportunities, and soundboard on how we can all do better with and for girls!