Reflection #4

Today in World Politics we listened to a BBC segment on the young girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot within the last day by a Taliban gunman. Of course, this story caught my attention immediately due to the fact that a fourteen year old girl was targeted. As you all may remember, I am interested in women's rights, especially in the MENA region. Malala was shot at because she advocates for education for girls, a right that every one should have. Education is the key to the future, and not educating half a country's--even half the world's--population can only impede our advancement as a society. For the life of me I cannot comprehend how this is not understood, how people stuck in their traditional ways cannot see how powerful and important girls are to the survival of their country and of the world.
I have been watching the documentary Half The Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a documentary that portrays the horrible conditions that women and young girls find themselves in every day, and that also portrays what activists have been doing to change it. This film is very moving--I recommend it to all of you--and it helped broaden my understanding of the how far this oppression reaches. I was recently offered an internship with iLIVE2LEAD, an organization that educates girls from all over the world, ages 15-19, on how to become a leader in their community back home. Upon learning more about this organization, I learned that one of the young girls (16 years old?) featured in Half The Sky is actually an 2011 alum from iLIVE2LEAD. Mentors from this organization taught this young woman, Srepov Chan, a Cambodian who was forced into prostitution and whose eye was gouged out by her pimp, how to educate men on the importance of using condoms to protect forced prostitutes, as well as to educate young girls and to help them out of their horrible situations. It is amazing to learn that this organization did so much to help her, and that her experience there actually made a difference.
I know that Malala has influenced many girls like Srepov has, and I hope that she makes a full recovery from her wounds. Our planet needs girls like these, girls who can work together to change the opinions of millions.