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‘It is the Nike way to pick some really big issue to work on,’ said Leslie Lane, vice president and managing director of The Nike Foundation, in Beaverton, Oregon, in a quote to The New York Times. Leslie spoke with regard to an effort known as the Girl Effect, which is a Nike Foundation – supported by Nike and the NoVo Foundation – initiative that is trying to help adolescent girls in poverty-plagued developing regions of the world.

‘The foundation along with Nike chose as their best investment an effort to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty in poor countries by focusing on the future mother of every child born into poverty,’ added Lane. 

The story complements the text on the Girl Effect website: ‘Helping girls to become better educated helps them as well as their families, their communities and their nations.’

Data on the site shows that positive changes can come in areas like health (the more schooling mothers get, the healthier their infants and children will be) and income (an additional year of secondary school will increase a girl’s wages by 15 to 25 per cent).

Why girls? Because when we all invest in girls, everyone wins – so goes the Nike statement. ‘Everything that happens to her in adolescence will have a profound effect on her and her family’s future, which led to the decision to concentrate on adolescent girls versus a health or a disease like HIV.’

The text at the site reads, ‘We’ve seen it with our own eyes through the investments we’ve made over the past four years: When girls have resources, they invest them in their families. When communities are educated about the importance of girls’ health, everyone’s health improves. When a girl is HIV-free, her future children are as well. When girls support one another, that support spreads throughout communities.’



This is the girl effect. The Nike Foundation and its partners are focussed on unleashing its power.

Improve a girl’s life and many more lives benefit: her brothers, sisters, parents and beyond. As an educated mother, an active citizen and an ambitious entrepreneur, or a prepared employee, she can break the cycle of poverty.

The Nike Foundation’s website underlines some telling points:
• Ensure she has seven or more years of education, and she will marry four years later and have 2.2 fewer children.
• When 10 per cent more girls go to secondary school, the country’s economy grows by 3 per cent.
• When an educated girl earns income, she reinvests 90 per cent in her family, compared to 35 per cent for a boy.
• When women have the skills to participate in public life, government corruption declines.

Yet, despite her proven potential, in today’s developing countries she is more likely to be uneducated, a child bride, or exposed to HIV/AIDS. Yet, about half a cent of every international development dollar is directed to her; 99.4 per cent of funding goes elsewhere. The world is missing out on a tremendous opportunity for change.

Backgrounder
The Nike Foundation began its exclusive focus on adolescent girls in the developing world in 2004.The foundation claims that they saw enormous potential in that arena and knew that realizing this potential would take significant investment – and that investment required proof of results. They started out investing in programmes to understand what girls needed. Now, their aim is to share with others, mobilizing additional resources towards girls. 

The clear goal of the foundation is to innovate for and with girls, creating conditions that support and value girls during their adolescent years, before it is too late for them. The foundation believes that adolescence is difficult for anyone. But for the 600 million adolescent girls in the developing world today, stepping into womanhood is harsh and abrupt. One moment she is a child; the next, an unpaid worker for her family and community. Soon, she is a mother herself.

The foundation works to get girls on the international agenda and drive resources to them. According to it, the best way to do that is to prove that investment in her unleashes the girl effect. Putting resources on the ground and into a girl’s hands changes her life by addressing her basic needs, her community and her financial opportunity. Hence, the foundation builds programmes for investment.

Investment direction
The foundation’s investments are often directed through requests for proposals (RFPs). It identifies gaps in investment based on what have been learned from current partners and others with expertise on the issue of adolescent girls. They issue RFPs to specific organizations, with concrete aims towards building the field’s understanding and innovations in girl-specific programming.

The RFPs include budgetary information, deadlines and specific measurement and impact expectations. Agencies, programmes and individuals submit their proposals for how they would meet the challenges that are outlined. The foundation selects the most robust proposal(s) and work with partners to execute the plan.