Think Olga

The main reasons girls drop-out of school in Brazil are related to gender inequality: early pregnancy, household chores and gender violence. The country has the highest rate of child and adolescent marriage in Latin America.

Our goal is to use the power of innovation and technology to engage young girls and boys in learning about gender equality in a meaningful and creative way, empowering them to promote changemaking solutions in their communities.

By focusing on the young students needs and realities, Think Olga will translate complex concepts of the UN's Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action into accessible educative tools. The methodology will be applied in youth development programs, starting as a pilot project in two Sao Paulo's public schools, to be scaled up in schools across the country.

We need to empower young girls and boys to build a more just, humane and safe world for all.

Brazil is placed in the 94th position in the Gender Inequality Index, ranks 5th among countries with the highest rates of femicide, every nine minutes a woman is raped and every two hours a woman is murdered. Sexism is deeply ingrained in Brazilian culture, affecting all aspects of girls and women's life.

From early on girls and boys are educated to play very limiting roles: the housewife and the breadwinner, impacting the decisions and paths they will take throughout their lifes and perpetuating the unequal (and violent) structure we live in.

Stanford University researchers reported that the simple fact of using the right language (harassment, sexism, gender violence), makes people recognize the problem and organize themselves to combat it, creating solutions faster.

However, organizations still struggle to find accessible methodology and language to talk about gender equality. It is one of the topics most sough by Brazilian educators when looking for teaching support materials.

The UN's Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action offers a safe pathway to preserve the progress already achieved and for obtaining new advances in favor of women, including the promotion of girls and women's safety and their access to education.

Think Olga will manage a cocreative process to translate complex concepts of the Platform into accessible educative materials that make sense for young girls and boys. We don't want to create another educative app that students will have no interest in downloading, we will take advantage of tech tools already popular among adolescents.

Working in partnership with youth development organizations, we will apply the methodology as a pilot project within students of two Sao Paulo's public schools, to later scaled it up in schools accross the country. This experience will provide data for organizations working towards improvements in school curriculum and public policy.

Our work is focused in girls living in underserved communities. They are the group most affected by gender inequality:

1) In Brazil, 43% of girls aged 14-17 who are not in school dropped out due either to pregnancy, having to take care of someone (child or elderly) or because of house chores;

2) The country has the largest number of teenage pregnancies in Latin America: 68.4 in every thousand. The world average is 46.

3) More than 1.7 million Brazilian girls and women between the ages of 15 and 29 have not completed high school, do not study and do not work in paid employment. They represent 26% of the young people in this age group;

Based on design thinking and systems thinking methodologies, our creative approach is human-centered. A group of young students will be invited to collaborate with us throughout the entire creative process, guaranteeing the tools created respond to their needs first and foremost.

Together, we will identify topics in the Beijing Platform that are more meaningful to the girls and work creatively to communicate about such problems as well as to share successful initiatives to combat these – both in the community and structural levels.

Gender inequality is one of the main barriers preventing underserved girls and young women access to quality learning opportunities and by creating awareness about this problem, through a creative methodology developed in collaboration with them, we aim to promote change-making conversations and solutions in the students' communities. Because these are "women's issues" they are often made invisible, therefore the project will collaborate to name the problems and provide data regarding them.

Young girls are agents of change and together we can build a world free of gender violence, in which women's knowledge and creativity are valued and shared.