How a Dutch Princess Is Leading a Global Fight to End Child Marriage
/
Focused students in india, one of six focus countries of the girls first fund. Mohammad Shahnawaz/shutterstock
“I do” is an empowering statement, one that implies the underlying free will to make one of the biggest decisions in life: choosing a partner. Yet every minute of every day, 23 adolescent girls enter into marriage well before they are able to provide informed consent.
Once vows are made, 12 million girls a year are separated from the structures of society that support self-determination, creating a power imbalance that leads to higher levels of domestic violence. Sexual activity can precede biological maturity, or lead to childbearing by girls that are mere children themselves.
Across cultures, religions, countries and ethnicities, they disappear from classrooms and businesses. Education grinds to a halt, and with it, future economic security and independence. The loss of potential contributions to society echo across public and private spheres for generations, to the tune of an estimated $500 billion a year.
The issue of child brides received relatively little global attention just a decade ago. Today, it’s a growing movement led in part by “serial entrepreneur” for social change Mabel van Oranje, a princess of the Netherlands and founder and chair of VOW for Girls.
Van Oranje recently shared how she created an ecosystem for change through three complementary organizations that form the backbone of the fight. Girls Not Brides represents the collective action of more than 1,600 organizations working to end child marriage around the globe. The Girls First Fund marshals direct funding for local grassroots community organizations. And VOW for Girls marries support from the wedding industry writ large with the education and empowerment of adolescent girls.
Finding the nexus
Mabel van Oranje’s background could’ve taken her in any direction. In the course of a 30-year career working to advance global social change, she’s held leadership roles with organizations such as the European Council on Foreign Relations, Open Society Foundations and the Independent Commission on Turkey.
But van Oranje said it was her work as the first CEO of The Elders, a coalition of independent global leaders established by Nelson Mandela in 2007, that first drew her attention to child marriage. Van Oranje explained that in 2009, The Elders decided to make gender equality part of their overall justice and human rights work. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter also proposed “zooming in” on how religion and tradition — usually a force for good — was being misused.
To move the conversation from “fairly abstract terms” to something more concrete, van Oranje decided to find a particular issue that was driving discrimination against girls. So many root factors were at play, she said, that she’d “started getting quite desperate” before sitting down with Maria Eitel, founder and chair of the Nike Foundation. Eitel was known for creating the “girl effect theory,” which holds that adolescent girls have the unique potential to stop poverty before it starts — a premise that’s credited with putting support for girls on the global agenda.
They were discussing the fact that girls weren’t getting enough attention when the subject of child marriage came up. Van Oranje said she didn’t have a clue how many girls were involved, guessing “half a million, maybe a million.” Instead, subsequent research showed that 12 million girls were impacted annually, silenced by a lack of social agency.
A clear nexus emerged within a spectrum of contributing factors: poverty, ingrained tradition, gender inequality, and education. Overcoming cultural norms and legal systems that allowed child marriage around the world would present a heavy lift.
Though there were “no easy solutions,” van Oranje decided the upsides could be enormous in relation to the Millennium Development Goals being chased at the time, and began playing a catalytic role in advancing the global movement to end child marriage.
A three-pronged effort
Van Oranje’s work to end child marriage runs through three organizations, all of which connect and direct funds toward the hundreds of organizations worldwide that are working on the issue.
In 2011, she founded Girls Not Brides, a global network of more than 1,600 civil society groups from 100 countries committed to helping girls reach their full potential and ending child marriage. A “secretariat,” it’s funded via government grants, foundations and multilateral sources.
In 2019, she established the Girls First Fund, a donor collaborative that supports front-line, community-led organizations that create the basis for change. A fiscally sponsored program of the 501(c)(3) Capital for Good USA, it’s mobilized more than $60 million since its founding. So far, careful oversight has empowered girls in six countries through 180 organizations, 85% of which are led by women and girls.
As an example of the kind of mobilization the fund is backing, Van Oranje described the work she saw last December in Nepal, including sex education to prevent unwanted pregnancies, organizing clubs where girls who grow up thinking they are “less than” can learn about self-worth, and workshops to help parents understand the importance of keeping daughters in school, regardless of current mores.
Also in 2019, van Oranje launched VOW for Girls, which mobilizes funds from the lucrative wedding industry toward efforts to end child marriage . It leverages networks of wedding professionals, large and small corporate service providers, and brides and grooms willing to make empowering girls part of their big day. One hundred percent of commitments go directly to the Girls First Fund, thanks to operational funding from donors.
Marrying vows and human rights
Van Oranje said that VOW for Girls first got its start six or seven years ago, after she attended a friend’s wedding. A “lightbulb went off” when she was considering what to buy the couple. “Materially,” she thought, “people don’t need another toaster.” What if instead, the wedding registry connected the celebration of a joyful occasion with the chance to help all girls find “love on their own terms”?
Research showed enormous opportunity. VOW for Girls considers the global wedding industry to be a $400 billion behemoth, including gifts, and estimates that the U.S. alone spends roughly $100 billion on weddings each year. Even 0.05% of that, van Oranje thought, would mean a $50-million-a-year boost to empower girls everywhere, at a time when just $50 can keep a girl in school for a year.
The idea has resonated with couples, including former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and Tom Bernthal, who committed $1 million to celebrate women marrying “of their own volition” last August. Calling child marriage a moral and human rights imperative that stunts progress for women, Sandberg wrote on Instagram, “We will never have an equal world if millions of girls continue to have their futures stolen.”
Van Oranje credits Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, with helping to get her efforts off the ground, calling him a “field builder” and an “amazing ally” of all three funds. They decided that in order for VOW to be successful, it was important that 100% of all funds raised from the industry “go to the ground.”
To make that possible, the organization fundraises separately for its $5 million operational budget, which has attracted donors including the Ford Foundation, OSF and the Kendeda Fund. VOW has also enlisted an “enlightened” group of individual catalytic and venture philanthropists called Wedding Band members, who commit to a minimum gift of $100,000 annually for three years.
Van Oranje explained that while VOW started in the U.S., “anyone can tap in, thanks to modern technology,” and is hoping for growth. Companies within the wedding industry currently represent 76% of general funds raised. The other 24% comes from couples and wedding professionals. Net assets have grown rapidly, from $190,000 in 2019 to $3.5 million in 2021. The organization expects to raise $6 million in 2023.
A tipping point
Despite all of the challenges, global momentum toward ending child marriage seems to be growing, building upon March 2016 resolutions by the United Nations General Assembly to end the practice by 2030, and a 2021 resolution by the Human Rights Council.
Van Oranje said she was also encouraged by data that showed progress in the last decade: a reduction in the proportion of women married as children from 1 in 4 to 1 in 5, at pre-pandemic levels. COVID-19 posed a great setback that she called one of the three Cs impeding progress, along with climate change displacement, and crises like the war in Ukraine, which shift the urgency and economics equasion of marriage.
A higher degree of public recognition also seems to be underway, as shown by the recent partnership on the issues by three powerhouse philanthropists: Amal Clooney, Melinda French Gates and Michelle Obama.
The hope is that short-term gains will lead to long-term change. “The beautiful thing about changing cultural norms,” said van Oranje, “is that right away, when what was once normal changes, it will never change back. We know that if we can keep this generation from it, it will change forever.”
“We just have to get to the tipping point.”
