Educating and Empowering Girls Increases our National Wealth

When a girl is compelled to drop out of school to get married, it isn’t just her who loses out on a future of upward mobility and better life conditions. The nation as a whole suffers. The education and empowerment of girls is a collective responsibility in a country like ours.

En-Light a Girl Child is helping more girls in India finish school and avoid early marriage through awareness and empowerment programs geared towards creating positive discrimination for girl students. Take a look at our Rajasthan Project Report Album to see just how:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1480918488804316.1073741833.1381856832043816&type=3

YOU can also help girls acquire the education they need to achieve their dreams through small interventions and acts of everyday heroism by changing the attitude of your community toward girls’ education, marriage and childbearing. Share your ideas with us using the hashtag #enlightagirlchild ! We are curating tweets, Facebook and Tumblr posts, Instagram images, and more!

Support En-Light a Girl Child by spreading the word. Visit us athttp://www.enlightagirlchild.com/

Visit our Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/enlightgirlchild to learn more about our hashtag campaign!

Malavath Poorna, Youngest Girl to Scale the Everest Knows the Value of Girls' Education, Do YOU?

A month shy of her 14th birthday, Malavath Poorna became the world’s youngest woman to conquer the Everest after a 52 day climb this month. Poorna hails from the Nizamabad district of Andhra Pradesh, India, where her parents are farm labourers. She is a class IX student studying in a government run social welfare hostel. Even though she comes from a modest background, Poorna told NDTV in an interview last November: “I will climb Mount Everest and after I am back, I am going to be an IPS officer.” And now that she has accomplished one goal, she is clear about her plans for the future. When asked by HuffPost about what is next for her, she said, “I am going back to school. I can’t neglect my education, without education we are nothing – most of our community people are living in miserable conditions due to lack of education. These are life lessons from my parents.”

Girls like Poorna are ambitious despite their modest backgrounds and know the value of education. Support girls like Poorna so that they can make us all proud with their extraordinary achievements! Help girls acquire the education they need to achieve their dreams! Share your ideas with us using the hashtag #enlightagirlchild ! We are curating tweets, Facebook and Tumblr posts, Instagram images, and more!

Visit our Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/enlightgirlchild to learn more about our hashtag campaign!

10 Hard Facts about Girls' Education

An educated girl can empower herself, lift her family, help her community, change her country.1 - There are 32 million fewer girls than boys in primary school.Education First: An Initiative of the United Nations Secretary General, 2012.
A girl with an extra year of education can earn 20% more as an adult.The World Bank, 2011.
2 - 65 million girls are out of school globally. EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012.
An educated mother is more than twice as likely to send her children to school.UNICEF, 2010.
3 –  There are still 31 million girls of primary school age out of school. EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012.
10% fewer girls under the age of 17 would become pregnant in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia if they had a primary education.EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012.
4 –  There are 34 million female adolescents out of school globally. EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012.
If India enrolled 1% more girls in secondary school, its GDP would rise by $5.5 billion.CIA World Factbook,Global Campaign for Education, and RESULTS Education Fund.
5 –  14 million girls under 18 will be married this year. That’s 38 thousand today – or 13 girls in the last 30 seconds. UNFPA, 2012
Girls with secondary education are 6 times less likely to be married as children.International Center for Research on Women, 2006.
If all girls had a secondary education, there would be two-thirds fewer child marriages.EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012.
6 –  In a single year, an estimated 150 million girls were victims of sexual violence. UNIFEM, 2011.
7 –  And 50 % of sexual assaults in the world victimize girls under the age of 15. UNFPA, 2005.
Education empowers women to overcome discrimination. Girls and young women who are educated have greater awareness of their rights, and greater confidence and freedom to make decisions that affect their lives, improve their health, and boost their work prospects.Education First: An Initiative of the United Nations Secretary General, 2012.
8 –  In developing countries, the #1 cause of death for girls 15-19 is childbirth. World Health Organization, 2012
Child deaths would be cut in half if all women had a secondary education, saving 3 million lives. And all maternal deaths would be reduced by two-thirds if each mother completed primary education.EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012.
9 –  Two-thirds of the 792 million illiterate adults in the world are female. EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012
A literate mother has a 50% higher chance that her child will survive past the age of 5.UNESCO, 2011.
10 –  There are 9.9 million girls out of school in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Ethiopia. World Bank Education Statistics, 2012.
By attaining a secondary education, a Pakistani woman can earn 70 percent what men earn, as opposed to only 51 percent with a primary education.EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012.

--Via OSU

When a girl is  drops out of school, it isn’t just her who loses out on a future of upward mobility and better life conditions. The nation as a whole suffers. The education and empowerment of girls is a collective responsibility in a country like ours.

En-Light a Girl Child is helping more girls finish school and avoid early marriage and childbearing through awareness and empowerment programs geared towards creating positive discrimination for girl students in India. Take a look at our Rajasthan Project Report Album on our Facebook page to see just how:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1480918488804316.1073741833.1381856832043816&type=3

YOU can also help girls acquire the education they need to achieve their dreams through small interventions and acts of everyday heroism by changing the attitude of your community toward girls’ education, marriage and childbearing. Share your ideas with us using the hashtag #enlightagirlchild ! We are curating tweets, Facebook and Tumblr posts, Instagram images, and more!

Support En-Light a Girl Child by spreading the word. Visit us at http://www.enlightagirlchild.com/

Visit our Facebook Page at  https://www.facebook.com/enlightgirlchild to learn more about our hashtag campaign!

Small Gains in Girls' Education, BIG leaps in National Development: Encouraging News from CBSE

There has been a heartening increase in the number of girls appearing in the all important Indian Central Board of Secondary Education’s school leaving Class XII examinations from last year. We need more of our girl-students to finish secondary school and go on to college.

Do YOU have any ideas on how to accomplish this? Tell us using the hashtag #enlightagirlchild on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Tumblr!

Visit our Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/enlightgirlchild for more information and details about our hashtag campaign!

Our Lost Girls: Human Trafficking in India and What We Can Do to Help

Over the past nine years, 300,000 Indian women and 64,000 girls have been abducted – and that’s the cases that have been reported. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, from 2005 to 2012, the number of women being abducted increased by 11.73% every year, while the number of girl child kidnappings soared 23.2% each year. Minor girls account for almost 85% of all kidnappings in the country, says the crime bureau. (In the official records, children are “kidnapped”, while adults are “abducted.”

(—Scroll.in)

 There are approximately 2 million child commercial sex workers between the age of 5 and 15 years and about 3.3 million between 15 and 18 years; forming 40% of the total population of commercial sex workers in India; 71% of them are illiterate; 500,000 children are forced into this trade every year.

En-Light a Girl Child Initiative helps STOP human trafficking and underage marriage by keeping girls enrolled in school instead. We accomplish this by engaging communities in extending support to girls and inculcating respect for their bodily integrity through our sensitisation and awareness program.

Visit us at http://enlightagirlchild.com/ to learn more about our outreach programs in Bihar and Rajasthan.

Like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/enlightgirlchild to keep up with our initiatives and share your ideas about the ways in which we can make India a better place for girls. 

Use the hashtag #enlightagirlchild so we can find your contributions in this dialogue on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram!

How will YOU help change these dismal statistics about India?

India ranks among the worst countries for women within the G20 nations. Help us change this state of affairs by making sure our girls stay enrolled in school and aren’t pressured to drop out to marry or take up menial jobs to supplement the household income. The education of girls is the collective responsibility of communities. Support the education of girl-children in India for a better future for all of us!

Help girls acquire the education they need to achieve their dreams! Share your ideas with us using the hashtag #enlightagirlchild ! We are curating tweets, Facebook and Tumblr posts, Instagram images, and more!

Support En-Light a Girl Child by spreading the word. Visit us at http://www.enlightagirlchild.com/

Visit our Facebook Page at  https://www.facebook.com/enlightgirlchild to learn more about our hashtag campaign!

Women in the Lok Sabha: Highest Ever but still Behind Global Average of Women's Parliamentary Representation

While the 16th Lok Sabha will have the largest representation of women MPs in Indian history, this is still only 11%, much less than the global average of nearly 22% of women in parliament.

Women form as much as 49% of the electoral base, yet get only 11% representation in the Lok Sabha. Is this fair?

Today’s girl students will be tomorrow’s electoral base. How do YOU think we can help build an empowered and informed electorate with better gender representation?

Share your ideas using the hashtag #enlightagirlchild on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Tumblr!

Use the hashtag #enlightagirlchild on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Facebook to tell us how you can make small interventions that yield big changes!

Visit our Facebook Page at  https://www.facebook.com/enlightgirlchild to learn more about our hashtag campaign!