Who I am
Amy McCauley
What I did
Co-ordinated a 5 day camp for the Irish Girl Guides on Sustainable Development Goals 5 (Gender Equality) and 10 (Reduced Inequality) to learn more about gender inequality and take action on it, as well as encouraging the IGG to use the SDGs in their furture programmes.
How I did it
I decided to apply for Development Perspectives’ SDG Advocate Programme last year. I took part in the SDG Advocate programme because I wanted to gain more confidence and further my knowledge of the Global Goals.
As part of the programme, we had to undergo an action project. As I’ve been a member of IGG all my life, I wanted to incorporate the organisation into my project. When we were told at Camp IGGNITE2017 training that we would be focusing on the SDGs, I knew I had found the right place to begin my activity.
The goals I decided to focus on were 4-Quality Education, 5-Gender Equality and 10-Reducing Inequalities. I believe education is a key foundation to build up one’s life and is a powerful tool of communication and interaction. There are still numerous inequalities faced all around the world today and I believe that they need to be highlighted and an attempt made to reduce them. While the government of Ireland certainly has made progress in regards gender equality, I feel the way it was approached was not salient and further work needs to be done, especially among young people.
I decided to run Gender Equality workshops through the IGG, which is a key issue being talked about in the media every day. I ran four workshops per day, across five days, and spoke to over 600 girls and young women.
Since then, I have given workshops to over 1000 girls and young women at the Girl Guides’ international camp in 2018, and plan to do the same at the next international camp in 2021. We developed 3 Gender Equality Girl Guide badges as a result of these workshops, which became the best-selling badges in their shop
- This case study has been adapted from the Bank of Actions for Global Citizens produced by the Global Citizens Award. For more, read Amy’s blog following Camp IGGNITE2017.
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