Last year I found myself in a rural village in Bangladesh—a country where most girls are married off by the time they are 11 or 12 years old. You can imagine then how surprised I was last year to be in an all-girls school surrounded by dozens of girls who had escaped child marriage all because they were given the opportunity to attend school.
Receiving an education is one of the many things I am guilty of taking for granted having grown up in a middle-to-upper-class town in America. Despite the obvious differences between my life and these girls’ lives in Bangladesh, I was surprised at how easy it was to connect with them.
From the two giggling best friends who sat behind me, to the trio of dancers who stole the spotlight, I could see so many similarities between these girls and my younger self.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon when we sat down to talk with some of these girls and tears began to fall from their once joyous faces that I was reminded of just how different our worlds truly are.
Never will I understand the pain of watching my older sister or best friend be married off to a much older man and taken away to live with a new family. And never will I fear that the same thing will happen to me.
For these girls, getting the chance to go to school through World Concern’s scholarship program means that they are far less likely to become a child bride. In countries as poor as Bangladesh, parents have a difficult time providing enough money to support their entire families and often decide to marry their young daughters off, instead of sending them to school because they cannot afford to support her anymore. Education is literally saving young girls, girls like Prishna and Rima and Happy and Sonny who I met in Bangladesh, from becoming child-brides. Education is saving Her.
With your $50 gift, another young girl will be spared from becoming a child-bride when she receives a scholarship and an opportunity to go to school. An education will allow her to grow into the young woman that God has created her to be and thrive in an environment that values her, in a society that for so long has denied these truths.
