Michelle Obama has announced that the Obama Foundation is launching a program to empower adolescent girls around the world through education. The program is called the Global Girls Alliance. This program will give these girls hope and will allow them to reach their fullest potential. This will be able to transform countries and families. In Michelle Obama’s speech in London, on October 11, she made it known that 98 million adolescent girls are going without an education.
In Tanzania, the girl students are escorted to the bathroom to take a pregnancy test. If the pregnancy test comes back positive, the girl is immediately expelled. According to the Center of Reproductive Rights, approximately 8,000 pregnant girls have been expelled every year since 2013. The president of Tanzania made this a law that pregnant girls cannot go back to school because they have “chosen that kind of life”. The way the girls get pregnant does not matter, even though girls can face sexual assault and harassment at school.
When girls hit their teenage years they tend to have full-time responsibilities at home. Girls in less fortunate countries tend to have approximately forty percent more household chores than boys do. There is also a stigma around menstruation in schools especially if they do not have proper products or bathroom facilities. This causes the girls to not be able to go to school and get an education after primary school, or even at all.
Some countries do not have the sources to give a proper education and if they do, some families do not have the money to pay for the school fees. Schools can be scarce in different countries. The closest school could be hours away and girls cannot travel that far every single day because the journey to the schools could be potentially dangerous.
The Global Girls Alliance is going to improve these issues and empower girls. Education will transform countries and families by lowering the poverty level and the mortality rate. Education for girls in these countries can boost the economy, and help decline child marriages.
The Global Girls Alliance is going to make a change in the world that is needed. On obama.org there is a quote that says, “A world where every girl can go to school would be a better world for everyone. Every single one of us can do our part to make that world a reality.” You can donate to the cause, get emails, or find more information at the website obama.org/globalgirlsalliance/.