"What can I do to get involved?"

My colleagues and I hear this often from people who want to do something to help women and girls around the world to have healthy and productive lives. Women should have a skilled birth attendant during delivery, girls should get all the nutritious foods they need to be healthy, and young women have the right to have access to family planning information, services, and contraceptives so they are empowered to plan their families and space their pregnancies.

So many issues need to be addressed in order to advance opportunities for women and girls around the world, but these issues can seem elusive, especially as a man.

On this first ever United Nations International Day of the Girl, it’s particularly important for men to be integrally involved in the effort to empower and enable women and girls to lead healthy and productive lives. We must be committed  to making changes, for the benefit of women and girls, that are equitable and just.

Men are surrounded by our mothers, wives, daughters, aunts, sisters, and grandmothers. We are unavoidably involved – these are not only “women's and girls' issues." Our  involvement just got much easier with the launch of Catapult, a crowd-funding platform for organizations that are doing incredible work for women and girls every day.

Hundreds of projects are available for all of us to collectively support. A few of my favorites are highlighted on my curated page, and I’ll keep this page updated as projects are funded and new opportunities for support become available.

Catapult makes it easy for anyone, including you, to build an on-line team of supporters, get feedback from the field on how your project is progressing, and ultimately how women and girls are benefiting.

This is your chance to get involved, to start a conversation with your friends and family around an issue that is important to you, and to find a project that brings you closer to the women and girls in your life.