The Girl Child and Her Long Walk to Freedom Leadership Program
The Girl Child & Her Long Walk to Freedom Leadership Program is a joint project of the Imago Dei Fund and the Institute for Faith and Gender Empowerment. It was launched in 2018 with a mission of bringing a contemplative and historic awareness to the intersection of faith and gender inequality and helping people “put faith to work through love,” to transform the deep roots under the global patriarchy.
The primary component of this program has been an immersive six-month reading journey created by Emily Nielsen Jones, co-founder of the Imago Dei Fund, and the Reverend Domnic Misolo, co-founder and executive director of the Institute for Faith and Gender Empowerment, with its core values of curiosity, awareness and liberation.
This leadership initiative has two main programmatic components:
- The Girl Child Reading Journey
- The Girl Child Video Collaborations Program
1. The Girl Child Reading Journey
The Girl Child Fellowship is anchored in the reading journey.
This fellowship (GFC) is a strategic community investment in leadership and activism to support a small cohort of faith-inspired change agents who have already demonstrated brave and curious leadership to work to untangle some of the vexing contradictions that exist at the nexus of religious faith and gender inequality. The GCF is a leadership development/reinforcement opportunity for change agents who don’t typically have access to leadership opportunities.
Through this opportunity, Fellows will have:
- Space to deepen their intellectual inquiry into the historic structures which underlie and perpetuate the patriarchal social norms which devalue girls’ humanity right from the womb and make them vulnerable to a systemic pattern of overwork, harmful traditions, abuse, neglect, and basic disrespect.
- Opportunity for contemplation to connect with their own souls, to cultivate inner freedom to ask questions, sort through their own religious and cultural beliefs, and tap into and clarify what is the deepest essence of faith that can “move mountains” (in particular those fortified by religion).
- Peer learning with a small cohort of brave faith-inspired change agents from around the world working at the intersectional space of faith, gender equality, and community-led social change.
- Opportunities to refining their strategic thinking and maximize the impact of a project already underway or something new that is calling their names.
Fellowship Focus – The main curriculum of the fellowship is the Girl Child reading journey which is a deep dive into the origins of patriarchy as the world’s oldest oppression/slavery and an invitation to walk the exodus path to truly leave this social structure in the past and take the next steps towards a promised land where all can live in freedom. Fellows will work on a capstone project that they have identified (or are already working on to) to address some problem in their own context that they can flesh out, workshop, and get feedback on from the cohort
2. The Girl Child Video Collaborations Program
Translations and Cultural Adaptations – We have translated the Girl Child animated video explaining the roots of patriarchy in Kiswahili, Portuguese, French and Hausa. A Burmese translation is also in the works. We have worked on these translations with local faith inspired leaders and faith-based organizations such as Tearfund. We have also produced a sequel to the video with DAI for educational purposes. These videos have reached over 20,000 people through social media platform.
The Girl Child Storybook Project for Children and Families – We are working with Tearfund on a children’s storybook based on the Girl Child video. This project is currently being piloted in Nigeria with five churche communities. The storybook will be integrated as a learning tool for children and families going through Tearfund’s Transforming Masculinity program.
IFAGE International
Shalom House & Estate, Bondo
Opposite Sura View Hotel, Bondo
P. O. Box 417 - 40601, Bondo Kenya