Excerpts of Roland Angerer speechs during a media briefing to launch Plan International’s ‘Because I am a Girl’ campaign in Nairobi July 11, 2014 Good morning members of the Press. My name is Roland Angerer. I am the Regional Director of Plan International in the Region of Eastern and Southern Africa. I wish to most sincerely that you for finding time to be with us at the launch of our “Because I am a Girl” concert. This concert is meant to highlight the plight of and raise funds for the education of the girl child. This initiative is part of our global campaign called ‘Because I am a Girl” which runs through 2016. The campaign is meant to address gender discrimination around the world by focusing on these inequalities by promoting projects to improve opportunities for girls in education, reproductive rights, legal rights, and other areas. This is against a background where, globally, 1 in 5 girls is denied an education by the daily realities of poverty, violence and discrimination. Every day, girls are taken out of school, married far too young, and subjected to violence in school. Not only is this unjust, it’s also a huge waste of potential with serious global consequences. In 2014, Plan has commissioned studies ‘Pathway to Power that seeks to better understand to better understand the degree to which girls in Africa (and by extension, women) are able to make their own decisions regarding their lives: their education, their future ability to earn a living and their capacity to develop, and exercise, leadership skills in order to participate meaningfully in their communities and at the political level. 30 million children remain out of school in Africa - Nearly 30 million primary school-aged children, mostly girls, are out of school in Africa. In Ethiopia, for instance, girls’ enrolment has leapt from 30% to 75% over a decade, whilst in other countries such as Niger and Eritrea, it remains well under 60%. Despite the progress made in primary school enrolment over the past decade, the likelihood of achieving primary education in Africa by 2015 looks increasingly remote as many more remain out of school. You might wonder where these girls are! One in seven is married by the age of 15. Up to half of all girls in developing countries are mothers before they turn 18. If current trends continue, more than 100 million girls will probably be married as children in the next decade.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 09:19:15 +0000
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