The Girl Child

Here’s a little bit of basic information about the ‘girl child’ and issues surrounding girls and woman in the developing world. I copied and pasted this information from http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/briefing/girl/index.htm which is an online resource for teachers set up by the UN. Please read the stats and then the short story below.

Have a great day!

-J

Vital Statistics

• Of the more than 110 million children not in school, approximately 60 per cent are girls.
• By age 18, girls have received an average of 4.4 years less education than boys.
• World-wide of the more than 130 million primary school age children not enrolled in school, nearly 60% are girls.
• In some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls have HIV rates up to five times higher than adolescent boys.
• Pregnancies and childbirth-related health problems take the lives of nearly 146,000 teenage girls each year. In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman faces a 1 in 13 chance of dying in childbirth. In Western Europe, the risk is 1 in 3,200.
• At least one in three girls and women worldwide has been beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime.
• An estimated 450 million adult women in developing countries are stunted, a direct result of malnutrition in early life.
• Two million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation every year.
  

THE STORY
A small miracle at the top of a mountain.

In its native Pushtu, Laram means "scorpion". Once a month a battered UN truck labours up a narrow, forbidding valley along stream beds and swithback roads to this tough mountain village in Pakistan’s North west Frontier Province. It is loaded with vegetable oil to be delivered among the parents of Aram who have agreed to send their little girls to school.
The oil-for-schoolgirl project administered by the United Nations is a new weapon in a worldwide battle against not just female illiteracy but hunger. The people here are so desperately poor that a girls’ education is often the last thing on a parent’s mind. In 1994, the World Food Programme of the United Nations launched its oil-for-schoolgirl programme. The strategy was to give an 11-pound can of cooking oil – often the most expensive item in the people’s diet here – to each girl who attended classes at least 20 days a month. The same incentive was given to teachers to reduce absenteeism.
The programme immediately raised a girl’s status in her family. "The little girl who picks up her can of oil has something visible to present," said a UN staff member. "She is bringing it to the household."
Immediately after the programme was introduced, school enrolment among girls in the village skyrocketed. One school saw its student population increase tenfold, from 20 to 220.
Some of the girls are very bright. According to Hussna Ara, their teacher, if they could stay, they would one day become teachers and help the poor. "If the oil stops, I am afraid, they will stop coming," she said.

Adapted from the Los Angeles Times (22 December 1997)