>>Maria Eitel: Less than 2% of every development
dollar is spent on adolescent girls.
So we aren't missing the mark by a little
bit.
We're missing the mark by miles and miles
because she's the amplifier of all other issues.
So enough about the economics.
You all might have heard about a girl who
is eight years old in Yemen who was married
to a 40-year-old man, she died on her wedding
night from injuries due to sexual trauma.
You might Malala who was shot in the face
as she tried to go to school.
Or you may have heard of the rapes in India.
All these things are horrendous, and they
have something in common.
At that moment, the human potential of those
individuals is completely wiped out.
They have another thing in common.
They're not very uncommon.
There are 142 million girls who will become
child brides over the next 10 years.
That's 38,000 girls a year who will become
a child bride over the next 10 years.
We need to stop that for her, and we need
to stop it for the world.
So when I was asked to speak about designing
for the future, I wasn't really thinking about
a cool new product or even a cool new industry.
I was thinking about how amazing it would
be if we could unleash the potential of half
the world's population to really contribute
what they can to the world.
They could then design the next cool product,
or revolutionize the next industry, create
the next industry.
Revolutionize politics.
Get involved in any issue.
Advance science.
Create art.
Write poetry.
But they don't have that potential unless
we give them that opportunity.
Okay.
But how?
Okay.
That sounds probably pretty exciting, pretty
amazing, but the question is how do you actually
do this?
So let's get really practical.
The first thing you've got to do is figure
out how to transform one life.
And we did this in the same way you would
as a business.
We treated the girl as a consumer.
We went to her one girl at a time until it
was thousands of girls and thousands of hours
of listening and talking and actually including
her, truly including her in everything we
did, from program design all the way to measurement
and evaluation.
And what we found out was how to transform
her life was actually really, really simple.
Each of you who are sitting here today got
to Google Zeitgeist and is sitting in this
chair because two really simple things happened
to you.
When you were a kid, there was some moment
where you sort of said, "I'm not so bad.
Actually, I can do something.
I've got some potential here.
I see there's a chance."
But then something magical happened.
For every one of you, someone -- your father,
your mother, your sister, your brother, a
friend, or just some random person who happened
to notice what you created -- told you you
were special or you had enormous potential
or you had something really unique to contribute.
And the contribution of those two things is
what makes a person successful.
A sense of their own self.
A sense of your self worth.
And then an environment around you that supports
you in that and gives you a chance to realize
it.
Now, what about an adolescent girl?
What does she need to succeed?
She needs the exact same thing.
So we call that ignite her, transform her
world.
She needs to have the experience of feeling
her own self-worth.
Wow, I can do something.
And then at the same time, something around
her has to support her and conspire with her
for her success.
Now, this can happen on a very large scale,
as it might have for some of you, or a very
tiny scale as it might have for some of you
as well.
Something very, very tiny.
But this equation has to happen for success.
Now, let's take an example.
We'll use Ethiopia.
So in Ethiopia, 52% of girls are married before
the age of 15.
21% of girls report that they have no friends.
It's hard to imagine that those girls report
literally zero friends.
So we set out with our partners to develop
a program to address these issues.
What we did is two things.
On one hand, we created girl club so girls
had a sense of support and a place for them
to develop their self-worth.
And then we created communities so they could
have a dialogue about girls being more valuable
than being traded in marriage at the most
important level.
This program has, wherever it's been, there
are zero child marriages that have occurred
before the age of 15.
And now, remember, over half of the girls
in this region were being married before the
age of 15.
So that sounds pretty great, doesn't it?
Sounds like huge progress and you get pretty
excited when that stuff starts to happen.
But there is a huge problem.
It's too expensive.
And you've got to get to the last girl.
You can't say this is great, we got to 300
girls or 500 or even a thousand.
You've got to get to all of them to know that
you've actually succeeded.
And so you face the problem of scale.
Now, we figured there had to be another part
of this solution, so we took the insight that
we have to work on the demand side as well
as the supply side.
And we took the insight that a girl needs
connectivity and that child marriage stands
as a unique barrier in her ability to realize
her potential.
And we worked with girls directly and created
something called Yegna.
Yegna is a teenage girl brand platform, and
it starts with a radio drama.
We created the first-ever girl band in Ethiopia.
Five diverse girls came together, and they
came around two simple things, the love of
music and the desire to talk about and deal
with the challenges they face as girls.
The team in Ethiopia designed with girls and
for girls, based on the hypothesis that if
-- This is the music.
So these girls -- The music was designed and
the radio drama was designed for them to talk
about issues every week, a new song to eventually
create a whole album and a dialogue.
Now, in Ethiopia, music is how culture and
information is transmitted.
So it was the most culturally relevant way
that we could get to girls.
And we worked with Ethiopian musicians and
designers and artists and created it, and
the results have been pretty phenomenal.
Girls now see, are reporting they have a greater
sense of their future and are planning for
it, more importantly.
They have increase in social capital.
There is an improvement in boys' and parents'
and gatekeepers' perceived value of girls,
and not just that, but their behavior toward
girls, which is what we're really looking
for.
The behavior change is where it all changes.
And most importantly, the cost is realistic
and sustainable.
So again, this is really exciting.
But again, it's not enough.
It's one girl, it's one community, it's one
country, and we've still got to get to those
250 million adolescent girls.
So one last piece before I close.
You may have heard of the Millennium Development
Goals.
These are the goals to stop poverty.
The world is in the process right now of designing
of post 2015 agenda.
Now, the way this looks is we've got a lot
of smart people and policymakers in closed
rooms, doors, coming up with strategies and
policies and people lobbying them to try to
get their favorite issue in.
We thought, well, what if we do this differently.
What if we actually, for the first time, included
girls in the design process?
What would that actually look like?
Have a look.
[ Video playing ]
>>> At the start of the millennium, world
leaders wrote a set of development goals to
help end poverty.
The goals were well intentioned but they left
out someone vital to their success: The girl.
>>> I wish that (indiscernible).
>>> I wish there was no more delinquency.
>>> I wish for my country to be well.
>>> Adolescent girls are the future.
They have the potential to end poverty before
it starts.
And right now, new goals are being written
for the world.
This time, the girls' voices must be heard.
So for the first time, girls and policy experts
are uniting to write a Girl Declaration that
lays out the goals that we all need to see
on the post 2015 agenda.
So far we have been to seven countries and
consulted with over 250 adolescent girls who
are living in poverty with hundreds more to
come.
>>> My dream is (indiscernible).
>>> I want to get more information about sexuality.
>>> I wish to be (indiscernible) my husband.
>>> Make my mother a good bride.
>>> The voices were taken to 
the Women Deliver Conference in Kuala Lumpur
giving delegates a rare chance to hear them
speak under the girl tree.
250 voices representing the 250 million girls
living in poverty today.
>>> Safe, healthy, educated girls grow into
strong women who transform the world.
>>> The more that we can get 
girls stating their dreams, their aspirations,
their ambitions, the better we are all be.
>>> If we don't obsess about the adolescent
girl, she simply is not included.
>>> So it's critical to invest in girls.
Right now 
we need girls around the world 
to be using their voice.
>>> Over 
the coming months the Girl Declaration will
be defined as hundreds more girls are consulted
in seven new countries.
Their lives are all different but their needs
are strikingly similar and their voices are
being unified in the goals of the Girl Declaration.
Read all about it and show your support online
right now.
We want to make those voices so loud the whole
world will sit up and pay attention.
[ Video ends ]
>>Maria Eitel: So each of you can be a part
of this as we try to get policymakers to include
girls.
The girls really need your support, so you
can go to girleffect.org and join in if you
feel like it.
So what's my point today?
Three simple things.
First, the best way to design for the future
is to go upstream and unleash the most important
thing on the planet, which is human potential,
whether in your business or your family or,
in this case, the power of adolescent girls
to transform the world.
Secondly, choose something that will cause
transformative, seismic change, instead of
incremental progress.
For too long we have been okay with incremental
progress.
And three, be ridiculously ambitious and just
get it done.
So I hope this picture now has some new meaning
for you, and you just might consider that
we can solve poverty before it starts in the
first place; that you might just consider
that the adolescent girl in poverty is the
most and best investment on the planet today
if we want to create transformative change
in every area.
Because when she wins, we win.
So on behalf of every adolescent girl in poverty,
all 250 million of them, thank you.
[ Applause ]
