The summer after I finished my first year of University, I worked at a home for pregnant and mothering teens. It had been open for about a year and housed up to four girls at any given time. The space was a safe place for girls to live while they were pregnant or new mothers. The eight girls I met during that summer were living there because they were ostracized by their family or had been living with a boyfriend and had nowhere else to go. It was a unique environment because the girls had access to care for their children when they would go to school in the fall and also they had food and shelter to find a job if they were not in school. The girls who have been helped by the program have flourished under the care and resource the home provides.
I wondered about girls in other parts of the world. There exists already a disparity in the access to education for girls. Girls who are also mothers don’t have the opportunity to re-enter the education system like the girls I knew in the home. There is no one to care for children in a single parent home if the girl is an orphan and taking care of her siblings. There is no one to watch over the children while the girl goes to school or work. Being forced into marriage at a young age forces a young girl to become a woman much too soon and takes away her chances at a bright future. From the words of one of the girls in the Because I am a Girl study,
“I wish I had not married so young and had babies so young. For me it is too late now, but my message to all teenage girls is do not marry before age 20 and wait to have children until you are 22 that is the right age for childbearing, when a woman is mature and can look after herself and her baby.” Ganga, Nepal.
Plan is helping girls by investing in education so that they don’t have to become young mothers and so that they have better resources to help their families. The BRIGHT Project has helped girls in Burkina Faso go to school who would not have otherwise had access. BRIGHT, or the “Burkinabé Response to Improve Girls Chances to Succeed…achieves high levels of school enrolment and graduation rates for girls by creating supportive learning environments in 132 communities across 10 provinces.”
By supporting Because I Am A Girl, I know that we can make a difference in the life of girls. I’ve seen what education and support can do for girls in Canada and so lets encourage our government and our peers to do the same for girls in other parts of the world who are in desperate need of equal access to education.
