Recently we talked in a blog about women-friendly spaces. In UNICEF's report State of the World's Children (2012) there are examples of NGOs providing teenage-friendly spaces. The report focuses on the fact that more and more children and teenagers are growing up in cities. Think of the difficulties of being poor, female, (males another time) living in an urban slum.

One NGO is Safe Spaces in Kenya, started by Peninah Nthenya Musyimi, the first girl from Nairobi’s Mathare slum to graduate from university and now a women’s rights advocate. Here is role model for us all! The organization creates safe environments for adolescent girls growing up in slums, providing spaces for recreation, mentoring, discussions etc.

Another organisation, in Ethiopia, has volunteers going from door to door in one poor area of Addis Ababa, contacting among others the young country girls who come into the city to work as maids. It is called Biruh Tesfa (Bright Future) and gives girls a space to build peer support networks. And it offers tuition in literacy, life skills and reproductive health.