How Early Marriage Targets Girls in Poverty

Posted by Casey on March 12th, 2012

At the intersection of poverty and gender discrimination lies early marriage for young girls. Early marriage can be both psychologically and physically detrimental, and one crippling result for some girls living in poverty is obstetric fistulas.

 
Defining Early Marriage
Early marriage is defined as the marriage of a girl between the ages of ten and seventeen years, and “current estimates show that approximately 82 million girls between ten years will be married before they reach eighteen years” (Otoo-Oyortey and Pobi 8). While the causes of early marriage are numerous, the evidence reveals that there is a link between a girl’s societal position as determined by her relative wealth and the age at which she will marry.

 
Root Causes of Early Marriage
Girls living in poverty marry young for several reasons, including: the inability of her family to properly provide for their child; the idea that girls reach sexual maturity after their first menstruation [...] Continue Reading…

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Pakistan’s ‘Saving Face’ Oscar-Winner Raises Awareness on Acid Attacks

Posted by Casey on March 2nd, 2012

‘Saving Face’ won the 2012 Oscar for documentary shorts.  This documentary produces a powerful punch of the realization of acid attacks in Pakistan.  Every year, at least 100 acid attacks are reported.  This number does not include the countless victims that are forced to remain quiet in shame or fear.  Attacks are often the result of revenge for refusal of sexual advances or marriage, domestic violence, or for other “dishonorable” behavior.Many patriarchal societies do little to incriminate a man for this terrible abuse.  Take for example, Nehemia from Nicholas D. Kristof’s “Half the Sky.”  After Nehemia divorced her husband, he asked for one last night to say goodbye to his children.  He instead burned his ex-wife’s face with acid, left his mark, and walked away without prosecution. To watch more on this story: click here

‘Saving Face’ captures the pain and anguish women suffer from acid attacks; the scar runs [...] Continue Reading…

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One Survivor’s Blog: A Pledge to Defend

Posted by Casey on February 27th, 2012

The following blog, “9to20 a survivor’s journal out of trafficking”written anonymously by a H.T. survivor serves as a powerful and intimate examination of human trafficking.

 
In one article, she pledges to:“defend those who cannot defend themselves but also to empower, in a supportive [manner], those same people to direct and improve their own lives”

She hopes to use her story as “inspiration rather than sorrow” by exposing stories of herself and other victims and providing reliable information as a source of education.We strongly recommend this blog for anyone interested in the ever present needs of victims and survivors of human trafficking.

See what action we’ve been taking here!
Educate yourself here!

Author: Renee Before
Editor: Casey Walker

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Water: A Crisis of Poverty

Posted by Casey on February 20th, 2012

At Global Breakthrough, we celebrate other’s efforts to alleviate poverty and to address other social justice concerns. Today we give props to charity:water. Charity: water is a non-profit organization designed to help the impoverished access sources of clean and safe water close to their homes.  

The Statistics
According to water.org, one in eight people lack access to clean drinking water; that’s nearly one billion individuals. Of that number, nearly two of every three who lack access to clean drinking water live on less than $2 a day, and one in three survive on less than $1 a day. Furthermore, water is considerably more costly for impoverished individuals in developing countries than it is for those with much higher incomes in first world countries. Even within the same city, however, people living in the slums may pay up to 10 times more for a liter of water than wealthier people pay. In addition, [...] Continue Reading…

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Children of Cambodia. A Trip Update 2/20/12

Posted by Alicia on February 20th, 2012

We have a small team currently in S.E. Asia. They have just spent a few days in Cambodia developing partnerships with existing organizations who work with children who are trafficked from Cambodia to Thailand.  Here is Jeff McKinley’s (President of Global Breakthrough) reflections on their trip:

I’m writing from the bordering city of Poi Pet on the Cambodia / Thailand border. After driving through dusty, and very bumpy dirt roads our team of six arrived in one of the villages where several hundred families live.
The people here are beautiful, especially the children who are innocent and full of life.  These are the children who are becoming the target of predators and traffickers throughout Cambodia and Thailand. Many of the children get sold or kidnapped into Thailand and taken to the cities of Pattaya and Bangkok for the sex industry where there are over 1 million people trapped.

Continue Reading…

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February Thailand Trip Update

Posted by Casey on February 15th, 2012

Global Breakthrough’s first all male team is currently in Thailand working to impact the consumer side of the sex industry. Watch this video to find out more on what is in store for them:

 

 

Want to get involved? Click here.

 

 

 

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Girl Up Organization Making Positive Waves

Posted by Casey on February 13th, 2012

The United Nations Foundation campaign Girl Up is one of many new organizations in a girl-and-women-centric movement sweeping the NGO world.
 
Girl Up’s Vision
Girl Up focuses on connecting American girls to United Nations programs that help girls in developing countries around the world. The campaign’s goal is to have a world where all girls ‘have the opportunity to become educated, healthy, safe, counted and positioned to be the next generation of leaders.’
 
Check it Out
The website http://girlup.org encourages girls to educate themselves about global issues and then to do something about them. One example is the work that the UN Foundation is doing in Haiti for women and girls, like building solar-powered street lamps to keep the streets safe at night. There are a number of ways for girls, or anyone else interested in the cause, to get involved; from writing letters of encouragement to girls around the world, to starting [...] Continue Reading…

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Unvoiced Diseases of Poverty Killing Millions

Posted by Casey on February 10th, 2012

Over one billion people suffer from what are called neglected diseases (WHO). Neglected diseases are conditions inflicting people in the poorest countries of the world. They are dubbed ‘neglected’ due to the fact that these diseases are often overlooked by pharmaceutical companies, the news media, government officials, and public health programs, and since these diseases commonly affect only poor people in undeveloped nations, they are not considered a priority for treatment or prevention (NIH).

Where?
A sixth of the world’s population are affected by neglected diseases, but the geographical concentration is relatively minimal: primarily Africa as well as some places in Latin America, southern Asia, and the Middle East (NIH). Despite the fact that so many people are suffering, many of us in developed countries have never heard of the majority of these diseases.

What?
One particularly heinous neglected disease is elephantiasis. More than 120 million people are victims to elephantiasis, a disease [...] Continue Reading…

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Is Afghanistan Ready for a Female President?

Posted by Casey on February 6th, 2012

Fawzia Koofi entered this world an unwanted baby; she won’t leave until her story is heard and her country takes steps towards a new way of life.

Fawzia Koofi overcame all odds, rising from an unwanted girl to Afghanistan’s first female deputy speaker of Parliament.  She also served as a UNICEF child-protection officer in Badakshan, the province with the world’s highest rate of maternal and child mortality.  Koofi evokes the severity of her past by telling the story of her mother, an illiterate village woman, who left her 19th child to die.  Koofi doesn’t resent her mother for this.  In fact, she empathizes with her mother who had “failed as a woman” by giving birth to a daughter, while her husband’s second wife, a girl of 14, had just birthed a son.

Koofi explains the solemnity of her mother’s situation and “her quiet strength and resilience is replicated in the millions [...] Continue Reading…

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Closer Look: Child Labor in Cambodia

Posted by Casey on February 3rd, 2012

At seven years old, Doung Paeaktra is the sole provider for his family. His father is dead and his mother is nursing a new born babe. He sits on the banks of a river sifting through trash and looking for plastics he can recycle and thereby gain a few cents. Doung is not alone; it’s been estimated that 50% of Cambodia’s children–over 1.4 million–between the ages of 7 and 14 are engaged in labor of some kind.

The Work

Many children work as domestic laborers in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh; fully one in ten children over the age of 7 are working in the homes of others. Also, some children in Cambodia are working in extremely hazardous environments that threaten their health or their very lives. They labor in salt fields and in factories and load heavy bricks into carts for hours a day. In the salt fields, salt is distilled [...] Continue Reading…

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