A day in the life: Kyra and Kate (Rural India and US)

What do we take for granted? Or, more powerfully, what do we not know about what we have and do not have?

Now, we know that every girl, and in a larger sense, every person, faces challenges…this means growth! But not all are afforded the same opportunities as others.

In the United States, most girls are born in a stable medical environment. A young girl raised in the states likely has ample nutritional resources, even baseline at a governmental level, and has legally-required access to a primary and secondary education. She is afforded opportunities to develop outside of school in multiple fashions that may appeal to her.

With education, she has the freedom to choose.

Let’s contrast this scenario to that of Kyra, a 7 year old girl living in rural India. As her birth was likely unassisted, the fact that she is alive is a great wonder. Sanitation services and adequate food are also rare in rural India, thus rendering her survival even less likely, but there she is. Now, with little to no support, the next challenge facing Kyra is simply attending primary and secondary schools.

All considering, Kyra may not have access to foundational education. She may become, like many other young girls, one of the 62 million who are out of school.

Now, girls who do not attend primary and secondary schools are shown statistically to be more likely to be forced into child marriage and child labor, continuing the status quo of gender inequality and abuse. Poverty will continue to dominate the lives of such girls, girls like Kyra, girls who have had little to no opportunity to experience education and escape the cycle that entraps them and perpetuates trauma after trauma, generation after generation.

It is easy to forget girls like Kyra, especially in Western societies. Little girls here do not face the same issues as those in rural India…and, after all, those little girls are thousands of miles away, often unseen and unheard.

But those little girls exist, and they are the make-up of what will become our global consciousness. To this end, they are everything that matters.

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