Empowering adolescent girls means investing in a brighter future

In a rapidly changing environment, it is important to assist young women with the challenges in modern communications and build their self-confidence. Adolescent girls face risks and vulnerabilities that challenge their healthy development into young women.

The Soroptimist Club of Húsavík og nagrenni in Iceland hosted a self-empowerment course You and Your Strength, for teenage girls. This is the third year in a row that this course has been held and it has been a great pleasure for the girls and their guardians. This time 21 girls from four schools from Grenivík participated in the course.

Soroptimist members themselves have taken care of the course thanks to their professional competences; the young girls could count on the knowledge of a social worker and a study career and family counsellor.

Empowering adolescent girls and giving them the opportunities, they deserve leads to healthier families, strengthened economies, and more equitable societies. As we strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this kind of initiative is more than ever important and essential.

From the comments made by the participants over the last three years, the project is considered as a great success:

• “Fun course, I want to go again”
• “We learned a lot of things and made new friends”
• “It is great to know other girls in the area”
• “We learned to love ourselves and how to be a good friend”