I have been an advocate of Girls Rights since before I knew what “Girls Rights” meant.

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.