Atlas Corps Public Webinar - Fellow Perspective Series

Friday, July 18, 2014 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM (EDT)

Atlas Corps is professional fellowship for overseas development professionals. With a network of 300 leaders spanning 60 countries, we are sharing our Fellow perspectives with the world through this webinar series. Fellows will share perspectives on critical social issues they are passionate about and the solutions they have worked on in their home countries or at their host organizations.

Talk Synopsis: Gender Based Violence - Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the 21st Century

Every 10 seconds, somewhere in the world, a little girl is a victim of female genital mutilation. Three million girls are excised every year. The scary reality is that three million girls in ten years can easily translate to thirty million young girls and women having undergone this heinous act.

Unicef estimates that 100 to 140 million women and girls alive today are affected by FGM. About half of those women are in only 3 countries: 27 million in Egypt, 23 million in Ethiopia, and 20 million in Nigeria.

This public webinar aims to address the following; what is FGM, the numbers on the wall, the geographical distribution, and the evolution and possible solutions to address the same. This will be a participatory discussion and we encourage participants to contribute to the discussion.

How to participate:

1.    Pre-reading - Please review the pre-reading document to help contextualize the discussion.  

2.    Please click here for the live webinar. During this live version, you will be able to participate in the Q&A session. If you are unable to participate in the live conversation, you can still see the webinar after the broadcast here.

3.    Please fill out this survey after your participation so we can improve the public webinar experience for you.

About the Fellows:

Kate Kiama (Kenya)  & Smiti Gahrotra (India) are both Atlas Corps Fellows who are currently serving at Nike Foundation in Portland, Oregon.