Healing, Storytelling and Girls' Empowerment: Stand Up for Girls and Let them Speak!

Our friend Dr. Susan Blaustein of the Millenium Cities Initiative just published an incredible article on Huffington Post in honor of today's "Stand Up for Girls" rally! Read the full article here.

Gender discrimination compounds the muting: where poor people go nearly unheard, poor women and girls have little chance of sharing their stories, or simply of being acknowledged. While this is true of many victims of terrorism, conflict and inequality, it is punishingly true for women and girls. We find examples in every one of the "Millennium Cities," 11 severely under-resourced cities across sub-Saharan Africa working earnestly, against tough odds, to attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Girls in Blantyre and Mekelle and Louga, three of these cities, spend so much of their days fetching water and performing other chores for their families that there is literally not time for school. No one has asked for these girls' stories. A child in Bamako, or Kisumu, or (to go far beyond the Millennium Cities) in Mumbai or Rio or Port au Prince or Chicago, lost a parent to HIV/AIDS, cares for her younger siblings and sells her small body to do so. She is ashamed to tell her story, and frankly, nobody wants to hear it. Another girl, in Kumasi, says out loud that she wants to be a nuclear scientist or the next UN Secretary-General. But people laugh at her dreams.

It's time to change this. It has been demonstrated over and over again that women's wisdom feeds families and communities and environments, making them healthier, stronger, more resilient and less tendentious. Educated women live longer, earn more and have healthier, better educated children. It seems a no-brainer: investing in women and women-to-be is one of the most efficient expenditures possible. Why is this not our top-priority investment, as a nation, and in today's world? What could be more efficient, delivering more bang for the buck, in the areas of child, maternal and family health, nutrition, safe water, environment and places of work, education, world peace? And what better way to start than by enabling girls worldwide, and their mothers, the opportunity to speak, and for us to hear their voices?

This September 22, the International Day of the Girl, is a chance to start turning the tide. Join the "Stand Up For Girls Rally".

Get Ready to Rally Tomorrow: Check Out LitWorld's Fun & Easy Activities!

Stand UP at NOON for GIRLS with LitWorld's Stand Up for Girls Badge!

Want some great writing prompts? Click here to download LitWorld's Stand Up for Girls Activity Sheets.

Post a photo of yourself (or your students! friends! and family!) standing up for girls and link it with LitWorld on Facebook and Twitter.

We are so excited for your participation in LitWorld's Stand Up for Girls Rally in recognition of the International Day of the Girl and look forward to seeing your photos!

Diana, Samantha and Liezza Hope You Will Stand Up for Girls September 22!

Equity in education for girls is the best step for changing the world. All across the globe, girls are out of school or struggling to get there.
 
On September 22, Stand Up for ten seconds in their honor, in solidarity.
 
Diana has taught us how to Stand Up for education and walk across treacherous stones, sewage and plastic to get to school. She will do anything to get there. She is eleven.
 
Samantha has taught us how to Stand Up for education, preparing dinner for her three younger siblings, bathing them, putting them to bed. Then trying to do her homework. She is fifteen.  
 
Lieeza has taught us how to Stand Up for education, finding women friends with the same challenges, learning to read in a Bead & Read, all while longing for home, where she cannot return because she was shunned for being HIV/AIDS positive. She is seventeen.
 
Please honor the lives of girls with us on September 22, the International Day of the Girl. And more, help them to change their own worlds through the power of education.
 
From Nairobi to Harlem to Baghdad to Manila, girls all over the world are hungering for the right to read and write. It's our turn to Stand Up for them.

See our earlier post for details on how you can rally with LitWorld and Stand Up for Girls.

STAND UP FOR GIRLS: INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE GIRL, SEPTEMBER 22

Stand Up for Girls on September 22, the International Day of the Girl

Two thirds of all the world's illiterate people are women. On September 22, we will stand up for girls and their right to go to school and to learn to read and write. Let us join together to launch a campaign to advocate for a transformative new era in girls' education.

Every girl has the right to a quality education that will ensure she has a lifelong way to protect herself, advocate for herself, learn what she wants to know and be who she wants to be. Every girl has the right to read and write words that will change her, and to write and tell stories to change the world.

Stand Up for Girls in 3 Easy Ways:

1) Spread the word. Use the Stand Up for Girls Avatar on all of your social media pages from now until September 22. "Like" and "Follow" LitWorld on Facebook and Twitter, and update your status to spread the word about Stand Up for Girls. Sample status updates:

Facebook: Join @litworld and me in the rally for Girls Education on the International Day of the Girl Sept 22! I stand up for girls and believe in giving them a quality education so that they can tell the stories that will change the world. Join the movement: litworld.org

Twitter: Join @litworldsays and me to stand up for girls' education on the Intl Day of the Girl Sept 22: http://litworld.org #standupforgirls

2) Stand Up. At noon your time on September 22, take ten seconds to physically stand up wherever you are (wear the Stand Up for Girls Badge- posted below!) to give recognition and awareness to the movement. Take a photo of yourself standing up for girls and post it on LitWorld's Facebook wall.

3) March. Organize a Stand Up for Girls March or event in your classroom, workplace or neighborhood on September 22 to bring awareness to your community about the urgency of providing girls with a quality education.

Contact LitWorld for translations of this information, including alternate versions of the Avatar and Badge images.

litworld.org
facebook.com/litworld
twitter.com/litworldsays

By standing up for all girls everywhere, we invest in our future.

The Stand Up for Girls Rally is cosponsored by The Millennium Cities Initiative and Connect to Learn, projects of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Millennium Cities and Villages across Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia Initiatives with Ashta no Kai and Arpana in India, and The Children of Kibera Foundation in Kenya.

Pam Allyn on the New York Times

As the new school year begins, Pam reflected on the experience of sending her daughter Charlotte off to college. Her blog piece was featured on the New York Times. Read the full article HERE.

"As I think about my daughter leaving for college, I have some great hopes for her. I hope she gets that strong look around her mouth quite often, whenever something doesn’t seem right or feel right, I hope she will stand solidly for things that matter to her, those acts of disobedience that lead to a better world or a more complete life. I hope that she will find many ways to keep finding ways to create stories, stories that resonate for her and build the world of her imagination, that this imagination is what will help her learn boldly, live deeply and rise, always rise."

RADIO: Pam Allyn Shares Her Work on Daybreak USA

Daybreak USA is a radio station based in Dallas, Texas. Hosted by Scott West, Pam appears on the show to share her own acronym for the word "READ". Listen in here:

Pam Allyn's New Article on HuffPost: A New Girls' and Women's Literacy Empowerment Movement

Pam Allyn has a new article up on the Huffington Post speaking about her passionate fight to create a new world for girls through the LitClubs work:

These LitClubs, they feel like life and death work to me now. Why? The LitClubs are showing the girls that there is something to live for, that they can come to school instead of trading their bodies for food and potentially contracting the same disease that has killed many of their family members. And the LitClubs are showing the world that education, in time, is like vaccinating a child against poverty. That we are racing time to make this happen because every day a child misses school and begins to fade out, we lose part of the next generation.

A story: One of our LitClub members is the child head of a household of many children, her siblings; both her parents died of AIDS. She frequently visits the lake near her school because the men down there will give her scraps of food in the morning; in exchange for the use of her body. She goes to school after this, and then home to collect water from a distance, cook, clean and care for her many younger siblings, and go to bed in the pitch black, sleeping on the floor in one room with all her siblings breathing quietly beside her. She has told me her life is hard, but she was the first to offer me her only biscuit at the snack time we provided (it was her only meal of the day). She said to me the other day: "The Girls Club is the first place I ever felt what it must be like to be happy. I love coming here and I wish I could be here with everyone singing and reading always."

I love the line "I am here for you" I found recently in a book of Buddhist meditations. I hope the LitClubs can be a way for us all to be here for her, for the girls to be here for each other, for us to be here for them, and through this, we all exist transactionally: We are here for each other.

Read the full article here.