Online Activism

One of the terrible things in the world today that really breaks my heart is that there are currently 130 million girls around the world being denied an education. It is clear that in many aspects of life women do not have the same opportunities as men. This is especially apparent in regards to girls receiving education in developing countries. An organization that is trying to change this is ONE. ONE is an organization dedicated to taking action to end extreme poverty and preventable diseases around the world.

#GirlsCount webpage “Educate a girl in one of the world’s poorest countries, and it boosts her health, wealth, and ability to take control of her life. She’s less likely to become a child bride, experience violence or contract HIV. But it doesn’t stop there. She’ll have healthier, better educated children. And she could help lift her family — and her entire country — out of poverty.”

ONE has recently launched their online #GirlsCount campaign to bring to light the issue of sexist poverty and girls being denied education and other opportunities. The goal for the #GirlsCount campaign is to create the worlds longest video counting each of the 130 million girls that do not have access to education. #GirlsCount requires everyday people to go to the website and be assigned a number. They then create a video of themselves counting their number in any way they like. The videos are then all edited together to create the worlds longest video to represent the 130 million girls. The creators of this video will then make sure it goes to the people in power in order to bring about social change.

A screenshot of some of the #GirlsCount videos created so far. Includes videos from Malala Yousafzai, Lena Dunham, Caitlin Jenner and Helen Clark

According to  Morozov in Christensen’s article, “slacktivism” is “political activities that have no impact on real-life political outcomes, but only serve to increase the feel-good factor of the participants.” While I believe that taking part in this particular campaign does make people feel better for not doing nothing, I do not believe it should be labeled as “slacktivism“. The aim of creating the video is so that people in power can see how much of a following this movement has and how much people support it. The fact that the video will be so long, means that those in power will not be able to ignore it and will hopefully use their position to decrease the number of girls without means to an education because of this I think that #GirlsCount can spark “real-life political outcomes”.