Here on the blog, we’ve got posts about how each of these issues affects girls! Here are some of your favourites:

Education

Why Educate? 6 Benefits of Girls’ Education

Health

Microscopic Emergencies: Infectious Disease 101

Keeping Moms Healthy: Maternal Health is a Matter of Life and Death

Water and sanitation

Girls and the Toilet Crisis

Child protection

Are Girls to Blame for Their Own Sexual Assault?

Think That Slavery Is Over? Think Again.

Economic security

Property Rights: A Way Out of Poverty For Girls & Women

Emergencies

A Girl’s Life: Living in a Refugee Camp

Sarah Taylor from MuchMusic Visits Ethiopia (And Tells Us About It)

Child participation

The International Day of the Girl Takes the Hill!

5 Tips for Spreading the Word About GIrls’ Rights

Sexual health, including HIV

World AIDS Day 2010: HIV From Mother to Child

Mathare slum, where the family lives, is home to more than 500,000 people – enough to fill a medium sized city! It is so big that the slum even has its own professional soccer team: Mathare United.

Ciciliah works selling vegetables and doing laundry to keep food on the table for her two young children. Her disabled husband also works hard as a cobbler to help the family make ends meet. The slum is a challenging place to live. Its a struggle to ensure that Ciciliah’s kids attend school and to keep the shanty house they live in safe and secure.

(Photo Credit: Claudio Allia)

1. Over 500 million adolescent girls and young women live in the developing world.

Girl safety

2. 21% of girls age 15 to 19 around the world are already married.

3. Almost 50% of girls between 15 and 19 years old believe that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances.

4. 100,000 girls are child soldiers.

Girls at school

5. Each extra year of education increases a girl’s income by 10 to 20% and means she is more likely to have a smaller, healthier family and to start to break the cycle of poverty in which so many communities are trapped.

6. Girls’ literacy rates are 13% less than boys worldwide.

7. 15% of girls worldwide can’t read and write.

8. In Sub-saharan Africa, 33% of girls between 15 and 24 years old can’t read and write!

9. Only 88% of school aged girls are enrolled in primary school – and only 77% actually attend on a regular basis.

10. Only 60% of all secondary school aged girls are enrolled at school.

Girls and poverty

11. A sixth of the world’s young people live on less than $2 a day, including 12 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa who live on less than $1 a day.

12. 27% of girls living in the least developed countries are involved in child labour.

13. Young women who are economically empowered in decent, secure work or successful small businesses, and who enjoy equal rights to property and land ownership, are better equipped to create a solid future for themselves, their families and communities.

14. An economically independent young woman has more power in the home to make decisions that affect the health and education of family members.

15. If girls could start successful business or get good jobs with decent pay, both countries and households would experience economic growth.

City girls

16. A girl is much more likely to go to school if she lives in a city – in developing countries school attendance for girls from 10 to 14 is 18% higher in urban than in rural areas, and 37% higher for young women between 15 and 19.

17. Girls who live in cities are less likely to be married at an early age – for example, in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, 50% of young women in rural areas are married by the time they are 18, which is about twice the rate of young women in cities.

18. There are at least 100 million street children globally – approximately 30% of those are girls.

Girls’ health

19. Half of all new HIV infections occur in people aged 15 to 24 – girls represent the majority of new infections in this group

20. 20% of women who are now 20-24 gave birth before age 18.

21. Girls have a longer life expectancy than boys – we live almost 10% longer as a group.

The next generation

22. Girls are the mothers of the next generation. Give a girl the skills and opportunities she needs in life and as a woman she will pass them on to her children.

If you want more facts, check out the Because I am a Girl reports. Stay tuned for the launch of this year’s report on September 22. See you soon on the Day of the Girl!

Which of these facts makes you want to want to DO SOMETHING about the Girl Issue?

Think of all your favourite comforts at home – your own bedroom, a welcoming kitchen with all the gadgets, clean water and electricity delivered straight to your door, and garbage pickup once a week.

Now imagine having none of those things, and you’ll have some idea what it is like for the more than one billion people around the world don’t live in suburbs, towns or cities. They live in something completely different: slums.

What is a slum?

A slum is, “a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people” or “a house or building unfit for human habitation.”

Insecurity

Slums are different from other neighbourhoods. Most slums around the world are considered illegal – the people living there build shacks without permission. People who live in slums lack the rights that come with property ownership or rental. Sometimes entire slum neighbourhoods are bulldozed to the ground without warning.

Without resources

Because most slums are considered illegal or temporary, they don’t get the typical services that a city provides, like electricity, running water and sanitation. People who live in slums often don’t have access to social services like school or health clinics either, because they don’t have recognized addresses.

This is especially terrible because people who live in slums are often the poorest of society and cannot afford to access these services on their own. Girls often have to give up school in order to care for their families. One such girl is Rabia, a 7-year-old who lives in a slum on the outskirts of Delhi in India.  She is the only person in her family who is healthy enough to work, so both her parents depend on her for survival.

Health and safety

Rabia collects water for her family on a daily basis. But when the municipal water truck doesn’t arrive, she is forced to use water from a well nearby, despite the sign that warns that the water isn’t fit to drink. Without running water and sanitation services, slum areas are at high risk for waterborne diseases. People who live in slums are also at risk of disease related to overcrowding and malnutrition.

Without electricity, families depend on open fires for cooking and heat. Their houses, often made from scrounged materials, are a fire hazard. Because the houses are so close together, a fire in one house can cause major devastation.

Watch this video to learn about Rabia’s life in the slum:

Tell us: What do you think the biggest challenge that Rabia faces is?

It is.

Instead of presenting the world according to area, this map’s distorted country size shows the proportion of all underweight children in the world that live there.

Though there are no countries that don’t have underweight children, it is clear that the developing world has an unfair share.

Girls Vs. Boys

If we were to add an extra layer to this map, where we divided it into girls versus boys, we would see even more distortion:

“The UN estimates that a billion people – one in every six people on the planet – do not get enough to eat. Seven out of 10 of the world’s hungry are women and girls.

These figures match the poverty statistics, as UN data reveals that worldwide, 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty are women.”

– The Jakarta Post: Both Hunger and Poverty have a women’s face

Women and girls make up a disproportionate number of people facing hunger and poverty globally. This can’t be a coincidence. What is the connection between girls, food, and poverty?

Hunger caused by poverty is maybe a good place to start. The connection is very clear: worldwide around 852 million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty. Even the first Millennium Development Goal combines the two issues of hunger and poverty together.

Hunger Perpetuates Poverty

On the other side of that equation, chronic hunger can in turn lead to the continuation of poverty: “The poorer the family, the larger the proportion of their income that is spent on food.”  For example, in Benin and Togo, more than 90 per cent of income is spent by the families in the Because I am a Girl Cohort. When such high percentages of income are spent on food, there is often not enough left over for costs like sending children to school, or going to the doctor in an emergency. It is difficult to break the cycle of poverty when there is no money left over to invest in children’s future, such as through education or health.

Women and girls are affected acutely by both hunger and poverty because of the status they are given in their homes and communities. We know that women around the world are food producers. “Data from the UNFPA shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, 80 to 90 percent of food is grown and sold by women; in Asia it is 50 to 60 percent, 46 percent in the Caribbean and more than 30 percent in Latin America.”

But, we also know that women are not reaping proportional benefits from this productivity. They are less likely to own or control the land on which food is grown than men and they are often the last to eat at a family meal (taking only what is left after their husbands and children have eaten). Girls are often asked to give up their meals to feed their brothers who need energy to attend school.

How Do We Solve It?

Food is inextricably linked with ending the cycle of poverty for girls around the world.  But the way that happens goes way beyond delivering food aid in the midst of an emergency, like a famine or flood.  Check out what Plan Canada’s CEO Rosemary  McCarney has to say about the stages of fighting hunger, and as a result, fighting poverty.

“I was so excited about going abroad and earning money and helping my family.” Noraida, from the Philippines who, at the age of 13, left to work in the Arabian Gulf.

Whenever I hear something like this quote, I try to think what I was doing at that age. What was I doing at age 13? I had just started Junior High and I was worried about whether or not my friends would think my shoes were cool or not. I was definitely not thinking about travelling to a new country with the goal of providing for my family.

According to the 2009 Because I am a Girl Report,

“Girls and young women are ‘on the move’ for all sorts of reasons. Some are trafficked or are displaced by conflict or natural disasters. Some accompany their families, or move by themselves — seeking education and employment opportunities, escaping poverty or fleeing from abuse.”

Because of all these different reasons, migration can be either empowering or cause extreme vulnerability. It is estimated that there were 191 million international migrants worldwide in 2005, although its not clear how many of these migrants were girls. The complexities of migration mean that there is no simple answer to making it a positive experience and minimizing the vulnerability of migrating girls. As well, its important to remember that sometimes girls are those left behind when parents and siblings migrate for work and other reason.

Global discussions around international migration focus on management of migration (e.g., borders, customs and immigration policy) and the relationship between migration and development. Change will come when human rights, safety, and children/girls are included in the discussion. Also, addressing the issues that girls face that prompt them to migrate — lack of economic opportunity and emergencies to name a couple — will make a big difference in reducing their vulnerability in the face of migration.

(Photo Credit: Patrick Doheny)

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!

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.