Name: Piper J
Social Justice Group: Women and Education
Date of Fieldwork: January 25, 2018
Name of Organization: Girl Rising
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Lauren Manning – Senior Manager of Communications & Community Engagement
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
We went to the Girl Rising offices and talked to Lauren Manning who has been working in social justice, mainly women’s education, for a while. She talked to us about the organization and the Girl Rising movie. She was able to answer any questions we had and helped us learn a lot of new information about girls’ and women’s education.
What I learned:
I learned about how hard it is to change the mindsets of people, most being men, in order to get girls into school. Many of these people in developing countries have a certain mindset and aren’t willing to change it because that’s how they have been living for years. That’s why it’s so hard to get people to understand why girls should go to school. Girl Rising has to come up with a way to get girls into school without changing an entire countries culture. A lot of these ideas are rooted in culture, tradition, and religion and many people in developing countries are not willing to leave these behind in order to put girls into school.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
I learned a lot about the Girl Rising movie and the backstories of the girls. Even though the movie goes pretty in depth about the girls we still had quite a few questions. Lauren also told us a little about the making of the movie. She told us about how many of these girls came from very tough families and that getting to know them could be hard at times because it’s harder to hear the story from the person than hearing it from someone else. Something Girl Rising struggles with a lot is getting people to donate and help out and the movie has been a really good solution. People don’t really want to help with something that doesn’t directly relate to them so the movie gives people a more personal connection to the girls.
