"I don't want to go to school today!"
I don't know how many times I said those words from the time I started kindergarten until I graduated from college. But school was just something I did, so it's hard for me to imagine my behavior if I'd been denied access to education. I hope I would have been like one of the extraordinary young women I met this week watching Girl Rising. Viewers of the feature film learned the stories of nine extraordinary young women fighting for education in their countries: India, Cambodia, Nepal, Egypt, Peru, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Haiti and Sierra Leone.
What changes when women in developing countries are educated ?
- Educating girls dramatically improves the well-being of their families, communities and countries.
- If a mother is educated, her child is 50 percent more likely to survive to age 5.
- Educating a girl breaks a family's cycle of generational poverty.
- When girls receive 7 years of schooling, they marry 4 years later and have 2.2 fewer children.
- When female farmers are educated, crop yields rise.
- When women take leadership roles in their communities, corruption diminishes.
- When 10 percent more of its girls go to school, a country's GDP increases an average of 3 percent.
- When women are educated and empowered, democracy is more likely to flourish and conditions that promote extremism are reduced.
- Educated mothers are 50 percent more likely to immunize their children.
- When girls are educated, a country's malnutrition and HIV rates decline.
- And $1 in the hands of a woman is, on average, worth $10 in the hands of a man.
According to World Vision, there are 33 million fewer girls than boys in primary school. Educate girls; change the world. Find out how to bring a screening of Girl Rising to your community through 10x10.