I’m going to make one of my rare forays into something political.
I’ll preface this by saying I rarely admire any politician. The very nature of their work requires too many compromises. But I believe this campaign can do only good.
Sixty-two million girls worldwide are denied an education. Many more than that are in circumstances where they have grave difficulty utilizing the education they’re given.
At its heart, education really is hope for a better future. A belief that with hard work and study, you can become more than you currently are. Our education system is flawed. It will always be that way simply because it is made up of people. But it is so much better to have even a feeble attempt, even if it is only access to books that describe times and places when the world was different because people dared to make it that way.
Imagine if that hope is gone. For sixty-two million girls it is.
Here’s a copy of my tweet:
Cathleen Townsend@CathleenTowns
The website is 62milliongirls.com and the instructions are:
ADD YOUR PHOTO TO THE YEARBOOK AND SPEAK UP FOR #62MILLIONGIRLS
In school, we learn that our voices matter. Tweet or Instagram
a black and white portrait and share what you learned in school:
“In school, I learned ____. #62MillionGirls don’t have that chance.”
Please join in and raise awareness of this extremely important issue. Thanks.
Share this:
Avid writer and reader of Faerie tales and noblebright fantasy.
Cathleen Townsend 
Wonderful post, Cathleen. Thank you for raising this issue. Perhaps the defining book that illustrates the lost potential is Half the Sky by Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn. 15 million girls are married before the age of 18 and often taken out of school at that point. I work for American Jewish World Service, a global human rights organization that focuses much of its work on women and girls.
I also love to read and write fantasy!
Thank you,
Alon Shalev
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I know being able to go to school meant the world to me. It gave me a window into another possible future.
I can’t imagine my life without that hope.
It sounds like American World Jewish Service does excellent work. It means a great deal that people step forward and help others. You can’t help everyone, but the good you do matters a great deal to those you reach. Thanks so much for that.
And I LOVE fantasy. I’ll be emailing you later. 🙂
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