One Goat Can Save a Beautiful Young Girl
At Rights of Girls, our mission is to provide a valuable farm animal, a goat, to African village families to aid in the prevention of FGM. Unfortunately, many families are unaware of the harm they are causing their daughters with this mutilation.
We first need to encourage these communities to at least listen to our message. It’s challenging as no one likes to be told their prehistoric tradition is but a superstition.
Our Solution
We’ve found a strategy that will allow the family to survive while protecting their daughters – by gifting a goat when they choose not to mutilate their daughter. It’s as simple as that.
By offering this goat, we want to get the attention of fathers, mothers, grandparents and future husbands and make them listen to the truth, even if we need to “entice” them!
The Agreement
For each daughter that the family agrees NOT to cut, we give them a goat. For two daughters, the family can be given a male and a female goat. Just imagine! Two goats and you change their lives.
They now have milk and are able to breed the goats, so their future is more financially secure. Their daughter has a more comfortable and pain-free future and will be less subservient and downtrodden.
Our role
We need to provide many goats to provide for their basic needs and also need to educate the villagers. Simply by creating conversation about FGM and its damage, we can help put a stop to this unsafe practice once and for all.
How can you help?
Donating a goat
By making a modest donation, to buy a goat for a family, you will in turn prevent a child from undergoing the horrific torture that is FGM. Your heartfelt donations allow us to help these families by providing them with a goat.
Many families living in Africa are unaware of both the health and mental issues caused by practising genital mutilation. Our vision is to educate and positively reinforce the fact that this practice must come to an end. By providing them with their needs we can help alleviate their stress as well as preventing another little girl from being mutilated. Over time, we hope to transform the way that this tradition is viewed in Africa, so that many women will be spared from the physical and emotional pain that it causes.
With $25 you can buy a bunch of flowers, a t-shirt or a pizza meal-deal OR you can save a girl by purchasing a goat through us. What will you choose?
The Story of Three Little Girls
“We met Meona in Mali, Africa in early 2012, she’s the little girl on our home page. She’s quiet and serious and you can tell she is carrying many responsibilities.
It was too late to save her from the cruel cut. However her family, pictured here, was amongst the first in Mali to agree not to allow FGM to be carried out on the youngest two daughters. They both have a much better future ahead of them.
The family is also now richer as it was given two valuable goats in exchange for this decision. What’s more, Meona’s father says he now believes the practice is wrong, and is actually not a part of their religion.”
Toni Fitzgerald
Our very first girl for our Mission …
...one goat, one girl at a time!