For years she worked from sunrise until late into the night. She never believed she would be free.

“It was a situation that was impossible to escape from. All the verbal abuse, all the threats; there was nothing I could do. My master was well connected, he knew everyone. He was highly regarded in his community. I was afraid of the consequences for my family if I left,” said Geeta

Kamalari slave system in Nepal

In Nepal, girls as young as five are sold into slavery by their families, often to work as servants. They are typically taken far from home and often can’t speak the local language; their new masters isolate the girls so they can’t escape.

Why does this happen? The age-old Kamalari practice of bonded labour sees girls as a drain on family income and only worth selling.

When families have nothing, daughters can be converted into a commodity.

Where is Geeta now

Now a free young woman, Geeta owns a small roadside cafe. She earns about 46 times what she earned as a servant, and she is free to make her own decisions.

With help from Plan’s Kamalari abolition program, Geeta did escape.

Learn more about modern slavery from this blog post: Think that slavery is over? Think again

How did reading Geeta’s story make you feel?

One girl, in Peru, describes punishment that she experienced at her school: “Our school principal punishes very hard. She makes us go down on our knees over small stones or bottle screw tops for over 20 minutes and also she often pulls our ears.” – Girl, 8 years old, Peru

Another describes sexual abuse at her school: “Our teachers should be there to teach us and not to touch us where we don’t want or to solicit love favours from us girls. We are irritated by love advances from teachers. I feel like disappearing from the world if a person who is supposed to protect me instead destroys me.” – Girl, 15 years old, Uganda

One of the ways to tackle this issue is to make sure parents, teachers and children are aware of their rights.  A youth group in Indonesia, supported by Plan’s Learn Without Fear campaign,  is trying to do just that by making the posters you see decorating this post to raise awareness of the dangers of school abuse in their community.  To learn more about school based abuse and the Learn Without Fear campaign, check out these videos (video one and video two).

Yesterday some girls told us about the different ways they’ve experienced gender discrimination.  One told us of how she plays hockey with boys.  The boys make fun of her for being a girl and whisper about her being weak.  Another girl said she challenged a boy in her class who said ‘girls should only be in the kitchen making food’.

The second we feel the injustice of being treated differently because we’re girls is exactly when we can start to understand the plight of girls around the world who face even worse injustices…the kind that leads to abuse, hunger and loss of life.

Eternia mentioned that some girls don’t even know that life can be better for them…that they have rights making them equal to the boys and men in their lives.

That’s why we’re doing this tour.  So girls here in Canada can be reminded of the power they have to DO something about gender discrimination.

I’m glad to be part of it!

My mother left home when she was fourteen.  She faced abuse at the hands of my father.  She raised three children as a single parent, without a high school degree, on government assistance.  She was an amazingly capable mother, and I learned from her how to think and live independently by watching her do it.  I was out of my mothers’ home at the age of fifteen.  Most people around me assumed, with the statistics to back it up, that I would never graduate high school, let alone make it to college or university.   “She’ll be living on welfare & have three kids by the time she’s twenty”.  I didn’t want to settle with the idea that the circumstances into which I was born and raised would dictate my future opportunities.  So I used others’ doubt to fuel my own belief in myself.  After leaving high school for two years, I returned, graduated on the Honour Roll, and then graduated Ryerson University four years later on the Deans’ List. 

I was unintentionally a living example of what Girls Rights’ rights are all about.

 Girls Rights are quite simply Human Rights.  Boys and girls have the same rights (such as access to education, healthcare, opportunity) but around the world girls face obstacles in accessing these basic rights simply because they are born a girl.  Plan Canada’s 3^rd annual Girl Report: “Girls in the Global Economy: Adding it All Up” offers hard stats to back this up.  The report also shows that investing in girls and young women can literally transform lives and lift entire nations out of poverty. 

 I find this point really interesting: Empower a Girl, you Empower a Community.

 It sounds so simple, and yet the feedback I get from a lot of people when I tell them I’m on a Girls Rights tour is “huh?” or “whats that tour about, some feminist, pro-woman, man-hating agenda?”.  It saddens me that some people can’t see beyond their own limited reality.  Women make up more than half the world’s population.  Empowering women, by simply allowing them to participate in decision-making, have access to basic human rights and control over their own resources, is key to reducing global poverty and instability for everyone.  When women are educated, they have better job opportunities.  Statistics show that women around the world spend 90% of their annual income on their families, in comparison to the 30-40% that men will bring home to their families.  Currently, most of the one billion people living on less than a dollar a day are women.  This one fact alone highlights the need to invest in our girls globally.  Gender inequality impacts the global economy.  And this, in turn, impacts all of us.

I have learned so much in our first week on tour in Northern Ontario. I want to write so much more!  Next week   In the meantime, check out some of our pictures from the first week on my myspace page, here:  

ETERNIA’S TOUR PHOTOS, WEEK ONE

Blessings and love,

 Eternia.

I didn’t want to admit it to her, but I was.  For a moment I was overwhelmed by what we heard today.

When Eternia asked the students to share any stories with us, they really shared.  We heard about a stepfather abusing his daughter and another student feeling alienated because she’s Native.  Eternia responded honestly with her experience with abuse and congratulated the first student for being courageous enough to speak out about her situation.  Masia told the second student that she understands how she feels.

Another student said she was really inspired by the show.  She didn’t know how bad things were in other countries, and other facts like how over half of the women in world don’t go to school.

We’re on the tour to talk about girls around the world who are fighting to gain back their rights to education, self-esteem and self-sufficiency.  I didn’t realize how much girls here in Canada would truly be able to relate to girls in places like Sudan, Haiti and Colombia.

They may not be dealing with extreme poverty like the girls in those countries, but they got it.

This song is for the strong girls and women taking back control in their lives.  Jennifer Hudson’s Invisible.