There are a number of unique factors that impact whether a girl is safe and supported at school, or even if she can go at all. For example, in many countries, girls’ responsibilities at home may mean that they have to miss several days of school per year, which puts them behind. Other girls may need to care for young children, or feel uncomfortable sharing latrines with male students.

A Girl Friendly School is one that tries to address these issues to make it easier for girls to attend school regularly. Plan supports Girl Friendly Schools by:

• Building separate latrines for girls and boys,
• Incorporating curriculum that supports different roles for girls and boys and encouraging non-traditional roles,
• Training teachers in gender sensitivity, and
• Implementing codes of conduct for teachers.

To learn more about Girl Friendly Education, check out these articles:

Read about Jessica Shepherd’s visit to Ghana, where she meets 12-year-old Abigail who is forced to miss her classes at primary school each week to sell fried fish door-to-door.

Read Latoya’s take on using sports to encourage girls’ education over at Jezebel.com

Read about one of Plan’s Girl Friendly Schools in Burkina Faso, where 73% of girls never finish primary school.

“When asked what they didn’t like about school, each of the girls spoke about the problem of menstruation. Although its stating, as it were, the bloody obvious, its worth remembering that on average girls have their period for one week in four, and in a country where many girls can’t afford underwear and almost none can pay for sanitary protection, this is hugely debilitating. The girls told us that they use banana fibers (apparently fairly effective) or plastic bags (rather less so), as sanitary protection, but that the school doesn’t have adequate toilet facilities to allow them to change their protection or clean themselves up. They don’t even have any toilet paper. I tried to imagine dealing with my period with only plastic bags and no toilet paper…and failed. It’s no wonder that many girls do not attend school while their menstruating. Would you?”

Let’s say that a girl gets her period around the age of 12, and continues to attend school until the age of 18. If this is true, that means that an average girl would miss approximately 1.5 years of school during this time on account of her period!

I want you to channel your wedding daydreams in a different direction today as we look at marriage as it is often experienced by impoverished women around the world.

Imagine that because you were going to be married into another family, your parents didn’t invest in your future.

Marrying into a new family means that the original family will eventually lose that resource, so they don’t invest in it. According to the 2007 Because I am a Girl report, “in some cultures, a boy will grow up and look after his parents, while a girl will be married into another family and is therefore seen as a financial burden to her own parents.” This means that the effects of marriage are often felt by girls years before they are ready to exchange vows.

Imagine being told by your parents that next week you were going to be married to someone that they had picked out.

In many places around the world, marriage is more of a transaction or exchange of resources. Girls are often have little or no power over their part in this transaction.

Without control over the decision to get married and to whom, girls may face early or forced marriage. In fact, “80 million girls in developing countries will be married before their 18th birthday,” says Graca Machel. According to UNICEF, child marriage is defined as “any marriage carried out below the age of 18 years before the girl is physically, psychologically and physiologically ready to shoulder the responsibilities of marriage and childbearing”

Imagine that your parents then told you that the man they picked for you to marry was old enough to be your father.

Early marriage often means that girls are married to much older men, which often means that the power dynamic in the relationship is affected by the age difference, as well as by the difference in social status between men and women in general.

So what are the specific risks of early marriage?

Married girls:

• Are likely to have less education and fewer schooling opportunities than unmarried girls
• Have less mobility than unmarried girls or older married women
• Have less household and economic power than older married women
• Have less exposure to the media than unmarried girls
• Have limited social networks
• May be at greater risk of gender-based violence than women who marry later
• Face greater reproductive health risks than unmarried women and married young women who have already had a child

(photo credit: .ygor)

“To survive on the streets, girls have to join one of the hundreds of gangs in Alexandria, whose joining fee is sexual abuse by older gang members. The authorities in Alexandria believe that girls who are not virgins, who are now ‘ladies’ are automatically the responsibility of their non-existent husbands. And this blind presumption means that the girls are officially invisible, leaving them often with their own babies, at the mercy of all the predators on the street”

Each country has different ideas about what makes someone a citizen or the responsibility of the government. Usually, it involves being registered at birth as a citizen of that country, or become a citizen later through immigration. Or, like we saw in the example above, for women status is sometimes determined by whether or not they have a husband. This process of registration may seem like just a formality, but in reality, it can mean the difference between being able to be seen and heard, versus being invisible.

With a birth certificate, passport, or some other official document of existence, a person is more likely to be able to access essential human rights. You need documentation to go to school, take exams, go to university, get married, get a job, get health care, vote, get a driving license, or open a bank account.

Each year, approximately 51 million children go unregistered, leaving them vulnerable to child labour, informal work, trafficking, sexual exploitation, and becoming a child bride or a child soldier. Women, who already face considerable challenges making them selves seen and heard, are particularly susceptible without documentation.

Imagine if you weren’t able to get your drivers licence, or travel outside of Canada, or graduate from grade 12, all because the piece of paper that said you existed didn’t exist.  I bet you would stand up and yell, BUT I AM RIGHT HERE…CAN’T YOU SEE ME?  Part of Because I am a Girl’s challenge is to make sure that women can claim their rights, including the right to documentation and registration. And then their rights to full and active citizenship in the world, where they can be seen, heard and counted!

“The feeling was indescribable. I didn’t move, telling myself the more I did, the longer the torture would take. Unfortunately, my legs began to quiver and shake uncontrollably of their own accord, and I prayed, Please, God, let it be over quickly. Soon it was, because I passed out. Lying there alone with my legs still tied, I could do nothing but wonder, why? What was it all for? At that age I didn’t understand anything about sex. All I knew was that I had been butchered with my mother’s permission. I suffered as a result of my circumcision, but I was lucky. Many girls die from bleeding to death, shock, infection or tetanus. Considering the conditions in which the procedure is performed, it’s surprising that any of us survive.” Waris Darie

The Facts:

• Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), or female genital cutting, refers to a number of practices which involve cutting away part or all of a girl’s external genitalia.
• Mutilated/cut infants, girls and women face irreversible lifelong health risks
• Approximately 100 to 140 million girls and women living today have been subjected to FGM/C in Africa and Yemen.
• This act is carried out for religious reasons, perceived health, sociological and sexual reasons. FGM creates irreparable damage and has no known benefits to girls.
• The side effects of FGM are frequently infection that can lead to death, infertility, decreased sexual pleasure, intense pain, intense trauma and many other physical and psychological damages.
• For More Information: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/index.html or http://www.unfpa.org/endingviolence/home.html

Not only is the procedure painful and traumatic, the practice of FGM takes place in areas that don’t necessarily have access to the best medical facilities if any at all. In a violent twist this already abusive procedure is sometimes carried out with any sharp object that can be found from a knife to a rusty tin can and just about anything in between. Abuse against girls doesn’t get much worse than FGM, especially when it is considered by many religions and societies to be a rite of passage from girl to woman.

Is the practice going to be afflicting girls forever? The more education given to people about the dangerous health implications and the traumatic side effects of this unnecessary procedure hopefully will make FGM stop. There is some good news: countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal and Burkina Faso are working hard to end FGM in their countries.  But, there is still a lot to do and the international community – and individuals like you – need to continue to put pressure on countries where FGM is common to ban the practice.

My professor once told this story to describe how microcredit works:

On his way to the office every morning, a man saw a woman selling pineapples near his work.  He ate at her stand a lot, and noticed that she worked hard for the small amount she got each day.  One day, he asked her what would make the biggest different for her business, and she replied, “If I just had $50, I could buy a second cooler and I wouldn’t have to go back home to refill mine with more stock in the middle of the day.  It takes a long time and I can’t sell pineapples during that time.”  He gave her the $50, and within a short time she had doubled her pineapple sales and paid him back the $50.  The man realized just how much difference a very small amount could make.

For a more technical answer, here’s a great wiki page on what and where the idea for Microcredit came from! Basically the way these programs work is by giving small loans to farmers or small enterprises that are easily accesible and have low interest rates and often the money that is paid back goes into community funds or lent out to other people who need them.

Hilary Clinton kind of sums it up in this quote:

“You know the proverb, Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime…Well, if you teach a woman to fish, she’ll feed the whole village”

It has been shown that women are often more successful in using microcredit programs to finance their households then men, and are more likely to share their resources among their community. The best microcredit loans go hand and hand with skill building and training programs. In Mali West Africa a Plan International program gives farmers the chance to access credit and when the farmers pay back the loan portion of the financing, the money goes into a community fund. This money is then used for more agricultural projects but also the money goes into education, health programs and other community needs.

By giving women the ability to improve their economic security we create a ripple effect. By empowering and improving the lives of women, they become teachers and advocates who pass on their knowledge and expertise to their community and to their children.

El Salvador is a small Central American country where Plan has worked for more than 30 years.  It is also home to 13 girls that are part of the Because I am a Girl study (following 140 girls from birth to age nine in several countries around the world to see how the fact that they are girls impacts their lives).

The main problems faced by children in El Salvador are:

• Infant mortality and disease
• poor education
• violence against children and women
• environmental, economic and social vulnerability
• limited participation of children and their families in the development process.

One of Plan Canada’s projects in El Salvador is focused on preventing violence against children.  Because it is considered normal to use physical methods for discipline in El Salvador, Plan is working with children to help them know their rights through drama, performances and workshops.  Youth that are involved are then taking their message and educating other kids in their communities about their rights as well.

Plan also works to help communities become better prepared to resist environmental emergencies. To learn more about Plan’s roll in mitigating a recent flooding emergency in El Salvador, check out this video:

Stay tuned for more posts about different places around the world, and the unique issues faced by girls in those countries!

A special Because I am a Girl report on The State of the World’s Girls says,

“Discrimination against girls and young women remains deeply entrenched and widely tolerated throughout the world.  Many of the challenges girls will face start from the moment they are born; in fact in some parts of the world, girls are the target of a social preference for boys even before birth”

A lot of this has to do with power.  The Spice Girls might not be together any more, but they got something right when they talked about girl power.  What they were really talking about is “empowerment,” which means having the ability to make choices, rather than just take what comes.

When I was in Ethiopia, I met a woman whose father had died of AIDS, leaving her mother, sister and her behind.  Because the father was the main breadwinner, his death left the family struggling to make ends meet.  The mother made a decision that one of her daughters should get married to relieve some of the stress of caring for two daughters.  The daughter I met married an older widower in her community who would provide a stable life and reduce the financial burden on her family.  It wasn’t until later that she found out that his previous wife had died of AIDS, and now she was infected as well.

If empowerment is about being able make good choices, this example shows how powerless can exist when the only choice available can put you or your family at risk.

But, it’s important to remember that women around the world are not just victims.  All around the world, you’ll also see women active in claiming their rights, improving their communities, and supporting other women.  The woman I met in Ethiopia is now working as a peer-counsellor for other women in her community, helping them to know their rights and protect their bodies.

This blog is about both those things…coming face to face with the issues faced by women around the world, and also seeing what strong women around the world are doing about it.  To hear more about empowerment in action, read Nazma’s Story.

Almost half…that’s right, I said half… of the people in the world lack access to sanitation.  And almost 1 billion people still drink from unsafe water sources.  Its something that we don’t think about very often here, but lack of access to water has a big impact on women and girls in the rest of the world.

First, unclean drinking water (maybe contaminated by lack of sewers) can make you sick.  According to Plan, four children every minute die from a water-related illness, like cholera.  So, basically, if we can improve access to clean water, we can prevent millions of deaths.

As well, lack of access to water has a less direct impact on women’s lives.  Often, women are the family members in charge of collecting water for the whole family.  If there is no running water in the house, this means going to a community water source to get it.  If the water is far away, the time spent going to get it can take up big parts of the day, not leaving time for other activities like school or holding a job.  Check out how this village in Tanzania ended these types of hours-long water chores with a solar powered system.

Creating a place to get water that is closer and cleaner is one of the ways of helping to empower women and girls around the world. What we take for granted each and every day is still a luxury for many.