The Human of Being: The Day of the Girl

I know I know, I'm 3 days late in posting this ... Sorry!

Anyway, so as you all know (hopefully) that last Thursday (11th!) was the 'Day of the Girl'

The first international day that has been recognised by the United Nations, that has been dedicated to the "Girl Child'.

The hoped impact of the day was to impact 4 million girls to move themselves form poverty to opportunity!

Plan's Advert for the Day of the Girl "Winning the war on poverty starts with educating girls"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm4-0LXYLSQ

I can say that the campaign hit twitter hard, with #DayOfTheGirl trending!! Success! And I managed to annoy all my twitter followers all day with my constant posts highlighting the gender inequalities between boys and girls and retweeting as many day of the girl tweets as possible. I even took the opportunity to highlight certain statistics gathered by the "Girlguiding UK Girls attitude Survey' whose results were officially released last Monday!

#dayofthegirl trending on twitter!

Desmond Tutu described the day as “A day to celebrate the fact that it is girls who will change the world.”

All day, different organisations such as "Plan UK - Because I am a girl campaign", "The Girl Effect" and "WAGGGS Stop the violence campaign" were rallying for publicity. I saw articles on ending child marriage, stopping sexual abuse against women and many many more. It was fab to see girls all around the world being represented and their needs/rights exploited for the world to take notice!

But why should the day of the girl be only restricted to one day a year? Whilst trying to promote this in school, some chauvinistic males in my year stated to me that it was "nice that girls got one day a year out of the kitchen" or "the other 364 days are for males". By the creation of this day have we contradicted everything we stand for? Have we implicitly implied that it is the only day where girls' voices should be heard? Hmm its a tricky thought. Although I do believe it is required, I possibly think a change of name is required as it really doesn't do this excellent opportunity for girls any justice! Perhaps a day of recognition or something along those lines would be a better title ... something to campaign for?! Well I think there are more important issues in the world!

I'll give you some of the shocking statistics that I encountered on Thursday, to show you that this day is a globally important issue!

60million girls are sexually assaulted at or on their way to school every year
6 out of 10 women experience violence in their lifetime
"Keeping girls in school is one of the most powerful tools to #endchildmarriage.
Each year 10 million girls under 18 are married. Today is#DayOfTheGirl, help #EndChildMarriage