When First Lady Michelle Obama took to the stage in September at the Global Citizen Festival in New York her message was clear: we must raise awareness of the 62 million girls around the world who are not in school.
During her video appearance at the event, the First Lady highlighted some key issues surrounding global education for girls. She also added her personal feelings on the topic.
“Right now 62 million girls are not in school… they deserve the same chances to get an education as my daughters and your daughters,” she said. “These girls are our girls, and I simply can’t walk away from them.”
The First Lady went on to speak about how women’s education is tied to economics. She said that girls are not just an asset to themselves, but to an entire country’s economy. In fact, in a report by the McKinsey Global Institute that was published just a week before the festival, it was found that if women participated in the labor force equally with men, the global economy would grow by 28 trillion dollars by 2025.
Mrs. Obama also spoke on how women’s education is tied to health issues. She said that girls who go to school tend to raise healthier families. Specifically, she mentioned two targets of the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals—reducing maternal mortality and HIV—both of which have been shown to go down once girls are educated.
At the end of the video appearance, Mrs. Obama called on the crowd at the Global Citizen Festival to launch a social media campaign.
She encouraged participants to upload pictures of themselves to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #62MillionGirls, and say something they learned in school.
Since the First Lady’s call to action, #62MillionGirls is trending on Twitter worldwide. It is also gaining the support of celebrities such as Stephen Colbert, Mindy Kaling and Misty Copeland.
The tagged photos will be included in 62milliongirls.com’s yearbook as part of the Let Girls Learn initiative, which was created by First Lady and President Obama in March 2015. The program works in partnership with the Peace Corp and USAID.
Let Girls Learn addresses the issue of continuing education for women and girls. While the numbers in primary school around the world have increased, many adolescent girls are still denied the chance to continue their education.
By focusing on community-led solutions, Let Girls Learn is trying to break the barriers and stigmas that keep girls out of school. Let Girls Learn also calls for smart investments in global education, which was echoed by speakers at the Global Citizen Festival.
After First Lady Obama left the stage Malala Yousafzai, the 18-year-old Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and women’s education activist, brought to attention a daunting fact about how the world spends its money.
“It’s not that there is a lack of money in this world. We have billions and trillions of dollars,” Yousafzai said. “But where the money goes is military, it’s things that are useless and that are not useful to society. It is a book and a pen that can change the life of a child, it’s not a gun,”
To put this into perspective, the U.S. 2016 Fiscal Budget currently requests $534.3 billion for defense and another $50.9 billion for defense on Overseas Contingency Operations—for a total of $585.2 billion. In contrast, the budget requests $70.7 billion for domestic education and $7 billion for State Department and Other International Programs, a fraction of which will go towards global education. This makes for a total of less than $77.7 billion dollars requested for education at home and abroad.
UNESCO estimates that $3.4 trillion will need to be contributed by countries all over the world over the next ten years to achieve universal education for both boys and girls.
The same day she spoke to the Global Citizen Festival, Mrs. Obama posted to Twitter a black and white smiling selfie with the words: “In school, I learned to speak up for myself. #62MillionGirls don’t have that chance.”
Sources: CNN, New York Times, The White House 1, The White House 2, TIME Magazine, UNESCO, YouTube, #62MillionGirls
Photo: cms.ipressroom