I was pleased to visit the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital and their rehabilitation centre,Desta Mender, and spoke with Dr Catherine Hamlin, the hospital founder and their CEO. I worked in Ethiopia in 2011 and visited FGM projects,hospitals, schools and NGOs. The prevalence nationally is 74 per cent but rises to 97 per cent in the south east, bordering with Somalia. It is just two years since I visited Ethiopia, where around 23.8 million girls and women have undergone FGM. We have also worked to train teachers, school pupils,health professionals, faith leaders, police and lawyers whilst also raising the awareness of around 5,000 people through talks, workshops and presentations to community and faith groups across England, Scotland and Wales. We also collected 350 faith leader’s pledges, which has led to our work for the Department of Local Government and Communities (DCLG) in training over 200 community and faith leaders as anti-FGM trainers. We spoke at summits and international conferences in Kenya,Switzerland and the UK, and worked on programmes in Kenya and Uganda. Apart from launching four more research reports this year, in Sierra Leone, Mali, Liberia and The Gambia, we have worked in Germany, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates,Kenya, Uganda, Mali, Senegal and The Gambia. It is also time to celebrate our latest annual review – our third for the charity.

We want to thank everyone who has helped us with this important and life changing work.

This is a huge achievement for 28 Too Many and helps us reach many, many more people with our important messages. Our trustee director Hoda Ali attended the award ceremony in New York and I accepted the award in London. This has previously been won by leading internationalcompanies Nike and Google. We were both surprised and delighted that as well as its initial impact, the campaign has also gone on to win a number of prestigious awards, including two GoldLion awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, top WPPED Cream Award from WPP, and numerous gold and silver awards including a Grand Clio for print and Advertiser of the Year for 28 Too Many at the recent Clio Awards in New York (see photo above). It has had a huge impact,achieving its goal of informing people that FGM doesn’t just happen “over there” – whether “there”is Africa, Asia, the Middle East or other diaspora countries, but something that affects 180,000 women and girls at risk in Europe every year. The “It Happens Here” campaign featured posters of six European flags (UK, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Scotland and Italy) across billboards, university campuses,and the media. We were delighted to partner with Ogilvy and Mather, a leading advertising agency, to roll out a European poster campaign informing the general population about FGM.

A quarterly update from Executive Director Ann-Marie Wilson.

The Gorgeous Girls by Marie Wilson