Did you know that today is International Woman's Day? It is! Now I wanted to write a post on this topic because as many of you know i am involved in Girl Guides of Canada as a leader for a combined Spark and Brownie Unit. I am particularly interested in showing them the world and everyone in it outside of their backyards. So last week we did Thinking Day, which is on Feb 22nd but my family and I were all very sick and so i cancelled the meeting. so we did it last week instead. I had the girls play musical chairs while each of them held a sticker that had one of nine things on them : Food, Shelter, Education, Freedom,Saying what you think, Protection from harm, People you love, Religion, Respect. so we'd play music and the girls would go around the chairs after one was taken away. If a girl was left without a chair to sit on we would read out her sticker and decided whether or not the sticker was something we could live with out. We played until we widdled the stickers down to Freedom and Education. Now this was a big one for the girls. they couldn't decide which was better, which was something you couldn't live with out. It took us 10 minutes of arguing, convincing, thinking it through to come up with the answer that EDUCATION was something no one could live with out. SO why is education something you can't live with out? well without an education you can't get a good job, which mean you can't provide food or shelter for yourself, which means you don't eat, which means you'd get sick and you wouldn't be able to afford a doctor to get better, which means you'd most likely die. All the other stickers were unimportant once the girls realized what an education can do for you.
And this was the point of the game.
Now with today being International Woman's Day.. I though I would share some stats on Women in the world.
Did you know that 7 out of 10 of the world's hungry are Women and Girls?
Did you know that 70% of the illiterate are Girls and Women?
Poverty is the number one killer of Women and Children in 3rd world countries. Because they live in poverty they don't get enough to eat, secure and warm shelter and drink filthy water... all because they can not afford to do better.
In many countries such as Ethiopia, girls and women work twice as hard as men and are paid next to nothing for their hard work, Either in actual money or in the fact that they do not have enough to eat to sustain them in hard labor they do each and every day. girls are also married off to much other men when they hit around the age of 11-15. They are expected to care for the home, the animals and the many children they will end up having as a result of an early marriage. The leading cause of death for girls between the ages of 15-18 in African Countries is.... Pregnancy and Childbirth.
There are many more stats out there showing the large equality gap between men and women in our world. I feel it is our duty as women, as members of our world to combat this injustice.
Here are some links to help you learn more about International Woman's Day and how to help with this cause.
http://www.wagggsworld.org
http://www.freethechildren.com
http://www.girleffect.org
Now I'd like to share a video from The Girl Effect Website.... I hope you are inspired by it to make change in the world.
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