My beautiful, talented, passionate roommate Kristina is doing her PSIII right now in Punta Gorda, Belize and loving every minute of it! Somehow she also finds time to Facebook me and let me know about things that she thinks I’d be passionate about, and today especially she was right on the money. October 4 is the day for The Girl Effect Blogging Campaign! I’m late, as usual in my insane life, but better late than never! So I’m here to share my blog contribution to the campaign, as well as Kristina’s.
Okay! So the girl effect fits right in with my love of charity and my love of all things pro-woman and pro-equality. The Girl Effect is all these things! The entire belief behind this unbelievable movement is that by helping girls, you help the world. Isn’t that so simple and so unreal? Here’s a thought that has been ignored for centuries.
If you help girls, you will change the world.
It’s a fact that by educating girls in Global South countries, things start to change for the better. Girls with more education marry later, have less children born into poverty, make more money, and are less likely to be abused. All of a sudden, by educating girls in this world, we have lower birth rates. We have lower incidences of disease. We have better economies. And this continues from generation to generation to generation. Beautiful.
Why was this so hard to see before? The feminist theorist in me believes that no one gave girls a chance before because girls were seen as irrational, unintelligent and generally lesser humans than their male counterparts. Though this remains true in a large part of the world today, it is also true that more and more people are starting to come around and embrace The Girl Effect. Because we can start with girls and end with humanity. We can use these amazing girls and women to start a global movement that is capable of bringing about real change. And that benefits everyone, male, female, Global North, Global South. We all win, and it starts here.
Check it out. I know you want to.
www.thegirleffect.org