International Day of the Girl 2025
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This year’s Day of the Girl theme is: “The Girl I Am, the Change I Lead: Girls on the Frontlines of Crisis,” and our hearts and minds turn to those born into war, displacement, and poverty—the ones most at risk of gender-based violence and trafficking. Despite hopes for peace and justice, the lived realities of girls in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan, and so many other geographies in crisis remain marked by conflict and loss.
And yet, as all of you who have been with us for years know, amid fear and uncertainty, we consistently witness extraordinary strength. At Footage, every day, we meet young women inside crisis zones and escaping war and conflict who refuse to be silenced, who protect one another, who still somehow, even despite living in a world where they experience or are threatened with constant violence, uplift each other’s hearts and create space for their inherent courage.
“I want girls to raise their voices… because I don’t want any woman’s voice to be silenced.”
— Participant, Afghan refugee, Greece
At Footage, we are certain, and research backs this, that investing in girls’ health, education, and safety is the path to a safer and more prosperous future for all of us. This is not a catch phrase: it is backed by a corpus of data that is too often ignored, hidden, and silenced within global systems.
For more than a decade, we’ve written on this day—each year calling on the world to invest in girls and those most vulnerable. Some years we write from refugee camps in Europe, other years from Central Asia, holding workshops with the compassionate leaders of tomorrow.
And every year, this year being one of the most dramatic, we also watch as hard-won rights are stripped away and as those most vulnerable—girls, refugees, queer youth, and women in crisis—carry the brunt of war, poverty, and political backlash.
Our commitment is to keep going: to scale compassion until every act of care, by us and those we serve, reaches those too often unseen. We are not stopping.
Through Footage’s feminist methodologies—from advocacy workshops in Kyrgyzstan to humanitarian interventions to end GBV in crisis settings, to digital storytelling, peer-to-peer well-being, and compassionate leadership initiatives, all co-created through fierce participation—transformation happens when girls’ potential is met with openness and dialogue.
This work is never abstract: it lives in relationships, in community, in the everyday ways those we work with lift one another and dare to imagine the seemingly impossible change needed to dismantle systems built to keep oppression in place.
Indeed, as hard as this is, this International Day of the Girl, we choose hope over despair.
We’ll be in touch again soon, as this month we’re presenting our work at gatherings marking 25 years of Women, Peace & Security, as well as here in Paris with feminist colleagues and policymakers. Together with civil society partners, we’ll be urging governments to fund healthcare for girls and women, expand access to education, and ensure girls’ and women’s voices are included in all decision-making spaces.
On this Day of the Girl, as ever, a deep and heartfelt thank you for standing with us in this vital work. I want you to know that I have heard a version of these words from so many of you—and indeed witnessed them in action—countless times over the past months: “What can I do to ensure Footage stays standing?” Even writing them here brings tears to my eyes. Thank you. You are with us—you are the rising tide lifting this ship.
We are yours, with grace, with gratitude, and with the embers of hope we promise to keep burning.
For more than a decade, we’ve written on this day—each year calling on the world to invest in girls and those most vulnerable. Some years we write from refugee camps in Europe, other years from Central Asia, holding workshops with the compassionate leaders of tomorrow.
And every year, this year being one of the most dramatic, we also watch as hard-won rights are stripped away and as those most vulnerable—girls, refugees, queer youth, and women in crisis—carry the brunt of war, poverty, and political backlash.
Our commitment is to keep going: to scale compassion until every act of care, by us and those we serve, reaches those too often unseen. We are not stopping.
Through Footage’s feminist methodologies—from advocacy workshops in Kyrgyzstan to humanitarian interventions to end GBV in crisis settings, to digital storytelling, peer-to-peer well-being, and compassionate leadership initiatives, all co-created through fierce participation—transformation happens when girls’ potential is met with openness and dialogue.
This work is never abstract: it lives in relationships, in community, in the everyday ways those we work with lift one another and dare to imagine the seemingly impossible change needed to dismantle systems built to keep oppression in place.
“In Afghanistan, I faced extreme despair. But when I came to Greece, despite many difficulties, I understood that after each difficulty, there is ease. And we should never give up hope.”
— Participant, Afghan refugee, Greece
Indeed, as hard as this is, this International Day of the Girl, we choose hope over despair.
We’ll be in touch again soon, as this month we’re presenting our work at gatherings marking 25 years of Women, Peace & Security, as well as here in Paris with feminist colleagues and policymakers. Together with civil society partners, we’ll be urging governments to fund healthcare for girls and women, expand access to education, and ensure girls’ and women’s voices are included in all decision-making spaces.
On this Day of the Girl, as ever, a deep and heartfelt thank you for standing with us in this vital work. I want you to know that I have heard a version of these words from so many of you—and indeed witnessed them in action—countless times over the past months: “What can I do to ensure Footage stays standing?” Even writing them here brings tears to my eyes. Thank you. You are with us—you are the rising tide lifting this ship.
We are yours, with grace, with gratitude, and with the embers of hope we promise to keep burning.
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