It all starts with the girls. That’s the message of a video, called “It Only Takes a Girl,” produced by Zoe Keating on the website Upworthy. The video invites the viewer to stop and think about the mostly forgotten 600 million girls in developing countries around the world—one in seven of whom is forced before the age of fifteen to marry an older man and lives a life devoid of education or opportunity. If the topic sounds depressing, it is. But the video is anything but depressing. It’s inspiring and clever and engaging (thanks, in no small part, to a young Bobby Dylan—watch it, and you’ll see what I mean)
Upworthy, an online aggregator of videos, was founded by Peter Koechley, former managing editor of The Onion; Eli Pariser, board president of MoveOn.org; and Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook. Upworthy has been described as “social media with a mission.”
Here’s how the worthy folks over at Upworthy describe their goals themselves.
We’re a mission-driven media company. We’re not a newspaper—we’d rather speak truth than appear unbiased. And we’re not a political campaign – we’re more interested in the powerless versus the powerful than in Democrats versus Republicans.
But we do have a point of view. We’re pro-gay-marriage, and we’re anti-child-poverty. We think the media is horrible to women, we think climate change is real, and we think the government has a lot to learn from the Internet about efficiency, disruption, and effectiveness.
If you’re new to Upworthy’s carefully curated collection of message-driven videos or even if you’ve visited the site before, watch this moving example. If you’re a woman, a sister, a mother, a grandmother, or an aunt, it might just get you going in the morning with a new sense of possibility.