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How do we empower young women in the Third World?
What can we give them to make their worlds and their lives better?
Beauty.
Not Chanel, or Bergorf Goodman's Spring fashion.
Not the paintings of Michel Angelo, or the music of Mozart.
These are certainly beautiful, and young girls from around the world will surely appreciate, or learn to appreciate these beautiful things.
No, this simply means teaching them to understand their own beauty, and the beauty around them:
- of their mothers and grandmothers
- their villages
- their festivals and celebrations
And the beauty in their own lives
You might ask: Don't these young girls already appreciate what is around them?
Not enough.
Chanel and Mozart are the standards by which they judge, or are made to judge their own beauty, even if they don't know who Chanel and Mozart are.
And this may make them feel that what they have is not adequate for their growth and empowerment.
For their appreciation of their own lives and cultures.
A young Ethiopian girl, growing up in her 21st century village, will surely have seen many examples of European beauty. And a clever tailor in her village can reproduce dresses and skirts as close as he can to what those magazine models are wearing.
But, what about the shawl and dress, the netela and kemis, the hand-woven cloths, embroidered with familiar emblems? A dress she knows so well that she can discern to the fold of the netela who is wearing it correction, and who is not? And she can judge who is wearing it with a style superior to the others? The one who looks beautiful?
And it is not only the clothing, its folds, the embroidery that makes this image, but also the dignity of the girl that makes it all stand out.
The beautiful quality of the wearer, whether she is physically beautiful or not, her dignity and demeanor, her modesty and charm, will add more value, more beauty to the dress, as the dress also compliments her beauty
.
So, if a girl is so discerning of her surroundings, it is surely through her surroundings that we can expect her to follow guidance and directions to make her life better.
Her base is her culture and her environment. What she will do is influenced by what is around her. And her successes will reflect this, making her efforts all the more important and productive.
What if someone told her that this is what beauty is, and it is far better for her because she can discover from the colors she chooses for her embroidery and the way she wears her netela, her own culture's beauty, and her own confidence?
Beauty also will make her aspire to bigger and better things in search of that superior color, that fine weave, to make the best dress.
Since this young girl is willing to invest so much time in making her cultural creations and appearances as perfect as possible, we should help her in performing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in the same spirit.
We should convince her that these goals, when performed with the same care and diligence that she does with these things she cares so much about, will give her a successful life. That she already has the tools.
We can teach her that just as much as she wants to have a beautiful netela and kemis, she can also attain these important sustainable development goals through the same diligence that she has learnt since a child.
Her culture is her empowerment. Beauty is her tool.