An educated girl will change the world

Published May 10, 2017 4:04am ET



Imagine a girl. She is sitting at her desk in a one-room schoolhouse. She loves school, excels at learning and dreams of starting her own business one day. But when she turns 12 years old, her parents can no longer afford her school fees and she has to drop out of school. What happens to this little girl?

In America, there are easy answers for this question. But this little girl lives in Eastern Africa and the answers aren’t simple there. With no other option, this girl joins the 62 million girls around the world who aren’t in school. She is forced into marriage at the age of 13 and has her first baby at 14 years old. During her first five years of marriage she has 2 more children, becomes a repeated victim of gender-based violence and contracts HIV.

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