"If you educate a woman, you have educated a population." - Kiganda proverb

Educational and economic empowerment of women could change conditions in the developing world. word.

snippets:

The central moral challenge of this century: gender inequity - the oppression of women and girls throughout the world.

How many of you think there are more males or females in the world?

Demographers have shown that there are more than 60 million and 100 million missing females in the current population.

Some reasons for this:

• in the last half century more girls were discriminated to death than all of the people killed in all of the battlefields in the 20th century
• sometimes because of the sonogram : girls are aborted before they are born

one of the best ways to fight poverty & terrorism is to educate girls and to bring women into the formal labor force.

Causes of Poverty:

1. overpopulation is one of the persistent causes of poverty

when you educate a girl she tends to have significantly fewer kids

2. spending (aka the dirty little secret of poverty)

not only do poor people take in very little income but they also dont spend the income they take in very wisely; most of it is spent by men. Research has shown if you look at people who live $2-a-day: 2% goes to education, 20% goes to tobacco, alchohol, sugary drinks, prosititution, & festibles. If you take 4% from this basket and put it into education there would be a huge change.

3. women are part of the solution not the problem

specific challenges:

• sex trafficking - 80,000 slaves were transported from Africa to the New World. In modern day slavery about 800,000 are traficked across international borders (not including within country borders). A slave back then was worth $40,000 - today a girl traficked can be bought for a few hundred dollars - does this make her more disposable?
• maternal mortality - in Niger 1 in 7 women can expect to die during child birth. Around the world one woman dies every 1.5 minutes. For every women that does die there are 20 that survive but left with an injury.

SOME SOLUTIONS

give girls and women education & economic opportunity!

An educated girl will get married later, will have fewer kids, and will educate in more enlightened fashion.

"the highest return on investement in the developing world is in girls' education"

there are very few things that can elevate your happiness in life research has proven that one of them is contributing to a cause larger than yourself.

We've all won the lottery of life, how do we discharge that responsibility?