Bang in the middle of the corridor is a shiny steel tree; the branches spread wide, brown wooden slabs hang low like leaves beside colourful origami folds. Say ‘hello’ to The Girl Tree; she’s listening to you.
An installation at the Women Deliver 2013 conference that just concluded here, the Girl Tree is actually a ‘wishing tree’. Quite like the Japanese wishing tree, or those numerous peepul trees in Indian temples, with scrolls of paper tied on fervently by devotees, hoping that the scrawled wish on the paper comes true. “This idea has been interpreted to represent the voices of girls living in poverty across the world today,” explains Maria Eitel, president and CEO, Nike Foundation.
The Girl Tree is part of the “The Girl Effect” movement, created by the Nike Foundation in collaboration with the NoVo Foundation, the United Nations Foundation and the Coalition for Adolescent Girls. The Girl Effect is about “leveraging the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world.”
250 wooden leaves
There are 250 wooden leaves, handwritten by girls aged 10-19 from India, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Rwanda, Kenya and Egypt representing the 250 million girls living in poverty. “Girls are the most powerful force for change on the planet and as we look towards 2015 [the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals], we want to enable them to thrive and reach their full potential,” Ms. Eitel says. “It all began with thinking about what we could do to get girls on the MDG agenda. We wanted visual impact, and an installation that could be transportable,” she adds.
The concept of the Girl Tree emerged as a result of several funny brainstorming sessions. The next thing was to go around speaking to the girls. “We did not frighten them about the MDGs. Again, we did it in a fun way, talking to them, getting them to open up, articulate their hopes and wishes,” says Ms. Eitel.
And thereby, the world learnt that Apophia from Rwanda wants to be a soccer coach; Ika from Indonesia wants her kids to live a better life; Shrusti from India wants to set up a karate training centre free of cost so that “women can protect themselves,” and that Chu from China wants to grow up, be a teacher and help people become knowledgeable.
On one side of these wooden leaves, the girls have inked their aspirations in their native tongue; and on the other side are English translations of these hopes and dreams. Some of these leaves are interactive, click on a button and you can hear the voice of the girl who wrote on the leaf, followed by an English translation.
This, however, is just the beginning. The girls’ wishes have been collated into Five actionable points which will also go into the Girl Declaration which will be launched on October 11, 2013, the second International Day of the Girl Child. Kathy Calvin, president and CEO, U.N. Foundation, says efforts are on to tap the voices of many more girls in other nations across the world.
The installation will also travel, to DFID in the United Kingdom, and the U.N. General Assembly. But the tree will also travel backwards, to the places it came from, whispering to the girls about how the world has committed itself to making their dreams come true.
