23.5.13

Educating Girls


CLICK ME!  CLICK ME!

I learned about the impact that ensuring girl education could have on the world when I was in school in 1997. I was blown away. Why didn't anyone tell me this before? Why aren't we making this a priority? Why hasn't anyone told the Miss America contestants? (because this is the answer to ending world hunger - wink)

Well, apparently a lot of very smart people did know about this and were doing great things to improve girls participation in school in poorer countries.  It was just me who didn't know.  But here we are a decade later and I suspect that there's still a lot of people who don't understand the power of this concept.  The Girl Effect has an excellent video explaining it here and 10x10 has produced the movie Girl Rising:
Girl Rising is a groundbreaking film, directed by Academy Award nominee Richard Robbins, which tells the stories of 9 extraordinary girls from 9 countries, written by 9 celebrated writers and narrated by 9 renowned actresses. 
Basically, making sure a girl goes to school means that she is more likely to get married later (in adulthood), access contraception, have fewer children, help to keep her family out of poverty through employment, and ensure that all her children are educated.  We're finally beginning to see some uptake on the issue and the results are bearing out in parts of the world, but there's still a long way to go.

I made this viz iPad size. I figured if I built it.... the iPad would come.  I sure wish I had one to test it out.  If anyone out there could let me know how it behaves, I'd love the feedback.

Cheers!

CLICK THE IMAGE TO VIEW THE VIZ.