Proving “The Girl Effect”: Corporate knowledge production and educational intervention

• The article analyzes the processes of attempting to prove a corporate foundation's theory of social change.
• It examines how a corporate foundation funds, produces, and distributes knowledge on the purported potential of adolescent girls in the Global South to end poverty.
• It focuses on how the monitoring and evaluation practices of one grantee in Brazil were informed by and contributed to the foundation's broader project of proving it's theory of social change.
• It considers how a corporate foundationasserts itself as an expert on adolescent girls and influences the development agendas of more powerful global institutions.

The Nike Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Nike, Inc., seeks to prove the “The Girl Effect,” its theory of change, through investments in adolescent girls in the Global South. The foundation defines it as the “unique potential of 250 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world.” This article examines the elaborate, yet continually contested processes of attempting to prove “The Girl Effect.” It draws on ethnographic research in the U.S. and Brazil (2009–2010) to analyze how the Nike Foundation funds, produces, and distributes knowledge on the purported potential of particular adolescent girls to end poverty. It focuses on how the monitoring and evaluation practices of one grantee in Brazil were informed by and contributed to the foundation's broader project of proving “The Girl Effect.” The analysis explains how this occurred through processes of knowledge production and educational intervention that were predicated on an epistemological understanding of the trope of “Third World girl.” It provides insights into how the foundation extends it power and authority over new bodies, institutions, and geographies by asserting itself as an expert on adolescent girls and by influencing the development agendas of more powerful global institutions.