Last week I stumbled across Plan Australia’s Because I am a Girl program. To use their words:

‘Because I am a Girl’ is Plan’s global campaign designed to fight gender inequality, promote girls’ rights and lift millions of girls out of poverty. Across the globe, girls are at the bottom of the social ladder, deprived of the same opportunities as boys. For example,research has shown that girls are more likely to suffer from malnutrition; be forced into an early marriage; be subjected to violence or intimidation; be trafficked, sold or coerced into the sex trade; or become infected with HIV.

Take two minutes to watch this great video:

Here are two facts that motivated me to get involved:

• Girls are less likely that boys to survive to their first birthday.
• A woman or girl will reinvest 90% of her income into her family.

The other exciting news I was interested in this week was Kevin Rudd announcing that Australian has pledged $225 million dollars of foreign aid for women and children. This is great news and will be interesting to track how the UN’s  “global strategy for women’s and children’s health” progresses over the next few years.