Why support
Give Girls A Chance?
In 2001, the World Bank identified education of girls as the key to effective development, saying countries that promote women's rights and increase their access to schooling have lower poverty rates, faster economic growth, healthier populations and less government corruption than countries that don't.
- Lack of basic education is at the root of poverty, sickness and conflict.
- Aboriginal girls in Canada are 16 per cent less likely to complete high school and 20 per cent less likely to complete university than non-Aboriginal girls.
- In developing countries today, almost 900 million adults are illiterate; two-thirds of them are female.
- In 1998 in Canada, 64 per cent of young women aged 22-24 with dependent children left high school before graduating, compared to 28 per cent of young men aged 22-24 with children.
- Less than 1 per cent of Canadian children live with teenage mothers, but these children are at a particularly high risk of growing up in poverty.
Who Do You Help When You Support Give Girls A Chance?
Growing up on the Curve Lake First Nation Reserve north of Peterborough,26-year-old Sarah Williams didn't know it was possible to become a doctor. She knew no aboriginal physicians. That's not surprising because even now, there are only about 100 aboriginal doctors in Canada.
“We didn’t grow up with those role models,” Williams says. “We didn’t grow up with people telling us we could do it.” With the help of the Curve Lake band and a scholarship from the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, Williams has just finished her third year in the University of Manitoba’s pre-med program for aboriginal students.
Halfway across the world in Peshawar, Pakistan, another young woman also dreams of becoming a doctor. In 1998, Weeda Zabih decided to flee Taliban rule in her home country of Afghanistan. In Peshawar, she found the Afghan Women’s Resource Centre (AWRC). It was to become her home for the next two years. Like the young refugee women she works with, Zabih is looking ahead to a new future. She wants to become a doctor, like her father. “That is mine and my family’s dream.”
These are just two examples of the types of programs you will be supporting when you make a donation to Give Girls A Chance. And statistics show that there are plenty of reasons to Give Girls A Chance.
The donations from 2002 went to:
- Stephen Lewis Foundation for the Umoyo Training Centre for Girls – Zambia $20,000.
- Rights and Democracy – Canadian Women for Women Afghanistan $20,000.
- Oxfam Canada (for girls’ education in Ethiopia) $10,000.
- National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation – Canada $20,000.
- Jessie’s Centre for Teenagers – Toronto $10,000.
- Literature for Life – Toronto $10,000.
- Victoria Society for Educational Alternatives – Victoria, BC $10,000.
(the funds are divided evenly among Canadian Charities operating in Canada and those in developing nations)
Since that initial distribution, hundreds of thousands of dollars has been granted to support the education of girls.
For further details about these recipients, click here.
For donation options, click on DONATE NOW at the top of the page.