Let Me Keep My Childhood
Overview
“Let Me Keep My Childhood” is a community-led campaign to address child marriage in Majdal Anjar and Chtaura in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The campaign began in September 2019, when Women Now for Development decided to move beyond traditional awareness-raising and training approaches and adopt a community organizing approach that would enable those most affected by child marriage to lead efforts to address the issue.
The campaign focused on building collective leadership from within the community, using personal relationships and lived experiences to mobilize people, organizing house meetings to reach families, and then listening to the community, including people living in camps, to determine the next steps. As the campaign evolved, it moved from securing pledges against child marriage to engaging men in efforts to cancel or postpone marriages, then to involving girls themselves in leadership and working with the Sharia Court to address unregistered practices related to the marriage of minors.
The Problem
Despite more than five years of ongoing advocacy, awareness-raising, training, and capacity building on child marriage, Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian girls, as well as some boys, continued to be married before the age of 18. The Bekaa Valley was one of the areas where these marriages were prevalent, particularly among Syrian refugees, due to a combination of factors including war, security concerns, economic hardship, traditions, and gender norms.
The advocacy team at Women Now observed that girls and women who understood the risks of child marriage were participating in sessions and programs, but knowledge alone was not enough to bring about change. This highlighted the need for an approach that went beyond lectures and workshops and placed those directly affected by the issue in leadership roles.
Rather than designing an entire campaign on behalf of the community, Women Now decided to explore a community organizing approach in partnership with Ahel, which specializes in community organizing and accompanying community-led campaigns.
The key shift was that the women whom the organization had been supporting began to lead efforts to address the problem themselves, organizing other women and members of their communities around the issue. Women Now provided different forms of organizational and logistical support and training, while Ahel accompanied the leaders and teams as they learned and practiced the community organizing approach and developed their leadership and strategy throughout the different stages of the campaign.
Building Community Leadership
The team began by identifying people who were most closely connected to the issue and the local community. Initially, the organization’s team reached out to seven women, three of whom joined the founding team: Fatima Al-Attar, Safaa Salat, and Rama Al-Sous, all women affected by child marriage.
The group expanded its understanding of the “people most affected by the issue” to include women and girls who had experienced child marriage, girls and parents who had resisted it, and people whose mother or father had married while still a minor.
The team focused on Majdal Anjar and Chtaura, drawing on the relationships and trust that Women Now had built through its community centers in both areas. After nearly 40 one-on-one meetings with potential leaders, the founding team grew to 17 women and men.
The aim was not to recruit as many participants as possible, but rather to identify people who were directly affected by the issue, had strong connections within the community, were not primarily motivated by financial compensation, and were willing to learn and grow.
By June 2020, the campaign had exceeded its initial goals. It had secured pledges from 1,826 families and helped change the position of 176 families that had previously supported child marriage.
Among the families that made pledges, approximately 1,100 turned their commitment into a public action by displaying the campaign’s slogan on their homes or tents. The slogan became a visible sign that people within the community opposed child marriage and encouraged others to ask about the campaign and become involved. The campaign also gained support from six religious leaders from different sects and denominations through recorded videos, as well as endorsements from five municipalities in the Bekaa Valley.
Engaging Men in the Change
Through listening to the community, the campaign team learned that men, particularly fathers, often played a central role in decisions related to girls’ marriages. Women therefore maintained their leadership role in the campaign while the campaign also began engaging men more actively.
This led to the “Brave Fathers” initiative, in which men involved in the campaign began speaking with other men about child marriage and intervening in cases they became aware of.
By November 2021, 90 men were actively involved. Their efforts contributed to the cancellation of 61 engagements and the postponement of 50 others, while 100 families agreed not to marry off their underage daughters.
At a later stage, the campaign expanded its work to include children and young people, encouraging them to take part in addressing child marriage within their families and communities. The campaign also moved beyond working with families to engage religious leaders and judicial institutions. These efforts resulted in guidance from the Sharia Court regarding individuals who were not authorized to conduct marriages involving minors and the possibility of reporting violations and following them up through legal procedures.
The campaign therefore did not remain limited to raising awareness or changing families’ attitudes. Over time, it expanded to engage new groups within the community and use different tactics, from house meetings and pledges to engaging men and young people and reaching out to institutions. This evolution shows that a successful campaign does not necessarily rely on one fixed tactic. Instead, it reviews what has been achieved at each stage and selects new tactics that can help move it closer to its goal.
