You are currently viewing FrontlineEndingFGM are Eradicating FGM – here’s the step-by-step guide on how you can join

FrontlineEndingFGM are Eradicating FGM – here’s the step-by-step guide on how you can join

In response to the collapse of USAID and the estimated $74.8 billion reduction in international aid in 2025, Frontline Ending FGM, backed by the Global Media Campaign, are providing an evidence-based, locally-led and autonomous model for accelerating the abandonment of FGM. 

Frontline Fight: How we are Eradicating FGM – By Ayodeji Bello-Awodoyin

On March 11th, at the 69th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) in New York, Frontline Ending FGM launched Frontline Fight: How we are Eradicating FGM by Ayodeji Bello-Awodoyin, a handbook for donors and activists alike committed to ending FGM. 

The event took place at the Millennium Hilton, One UN Plaza, drawing activists, donors, and allies from across the world.

Ayo Bello, author of ‘Frontline Fight’, doing a short reading at the book launch, March 11th 2025
Ayo Bello, author of ‘Frontline Fight’, doing a short reading at the book launch, March 11th 2025

The handbook reflects the importance of supporting grassroots activists in the face of turbulent times and international aid cuts, offering an autonomous and secure strategy that has proven to be cost-effective and impactful.

Frontline Fight is more than just a book – it’s a no-fluff, evidence-based manual for ending FGM. Built in collaboration with over 1, 000 frontline women, the handbook distills decades of grassroots experience into a practical call to action:

  • Work with grassroots networks of survivors and activists
  • Harness local media and radio to shift harmful social norms and amplify influential voices
  • Launch Born Perfect Caravans—powerful community-led campaigns that challenge FGM at the frontlines

It also outlines Frontline Ending FGM’s three-step solution – evidence-based, tried and tested, and already achieving a 94% success rate in communities where it’s been implemented:

  1. Born Perfect Academies – Bringing together survivors, activists, and influential voices from each region for five days of direct training on the Tree of Life, Born Perfect Caravans, and local media blitzes ahead of campaign roll-out.
  2. Born Perfect Caravans – A mobile, high-impact outreach effort using a giant movie screen, local religious leaders, musicians, doctors, and journalists to bring anti-FGM education and storytelling directly to communities.
  3. Sustained Local Media Campaigns – Each Caravan sparks a three-year wave of end-FGM messaging through local radio and television, embedding new narratives and sustaining momentum.

Frontline Ending FGM extends deep gratitude to the Wallace Global Fund, and other partners who have supported and elevated the voices of frontline women across Africa and beyond.

For more on the Born Perfect campaign and to explore the three-step model to ending FGM, visit: frontlineendingfgm.org.

Maggie O'Kane

Maggie O’Kane is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Global Media Campaign to End FGM. A former European, Amnesty International and British Journalist of the Year, she was also the Multi-media Investigations Editor at the Guardian and also founded #GuardianFilms, the Guardian’s Emmy Award-winning film unit. She is also one of the founding members of #FrontlineEndingFGM established with The Wallace Global Fund and UNFPA to shift power and funding to frontline feminist organisations across Africa ending FGM.