Care USA, the US arm of the anti-poverty NGO, and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) this week received grants 
of $7.7m (£4.9m) and $15.3m respectively from the Kendeda fund to tackle child marriage in south Asia. Both organisations 
will use the money to support local NG0s. 
Founded 10 years ago, the Kendeda fund worked initially on environmental sustainability in the US, but last year created a 
girls' rights portfolio. AJWS will focus on India, Care on Nepal and Bangladesh. 
All three countries have laws against child marriage, but implementation has proved difficult. Civil child marriage laws are 
not enforced, and religious or social customs prevail. 
In Nepal, Care supports groups such as Chunauti, which seeks to spread its message against child marriage among 
schools and local businesses. The local NGO persuaded factories to put anti-child marriage slogans in their production 
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materials. It also convinced a food catering business not to cater for child marriage ceremonies. 
For Care and AJWS, the logical route is to work through local partners familiar with regional conditions and practices, and 
based where the pressure points are. For the local NG0s, it shows they are not working alone on a difficult problem only now 
receiving the attention it merits. 
The UN high-level panel appointed by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, to look at development targets to replace the 
millennium development goals when they expire in 2015, has urged the recognition of child marriage as a key indicator of 
female empowerment. In another sign that child marriage is moving up the development agenda, Girls Not Brides, the global 
partnership to end child marriage, was formed in September 2011 to tackle the problem. 
Empowerment can come through that catch-all term, livelihoods training. Groups such as Brac, the Bangladeshi NGO, for 
example, have created clubs in Uganda where young girls learn to develop confidence through storytelling and songwriting. 
They also learn more practical skills, from financial literacy and tailoring to agricultural work. 
Backed by AJWS, Mohammad Bazar Backward Classes Development Society in West Bengal takes a similar approach. 
The organisation, which works with marginalised Muslim and tribal women and children in urban Kolkata, runs a school for 
girls as well as vocational training for women in the rural area of Birbhum. 
"We work to build girls' aspirations, promote girls' ideas of themselves when they don't have aspirations, and engage with 
key decisionmakers — parents, teachers and religious leaders," said Javid Syed, Asia programme officer for AJWS. 
AJWS helped change Zeenat's life. It provided her with vocational training, allowing her to become financially independent 
and diminishing the likelihood that economic need will turn her towards another abusive marriage. If Zeenat does marry 
again, the hope is that she will have the support of her family and the ability to leave the marriage if she chooses, in full 
knowledge of her rights. 
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