by senior contributor Brendan Kownacki
Photo credit: Brendan Kownacki
If you’re going to tackle a global issue, you want to have as many loud and powerful voices on your side. In the case of access to education for women around the globe, there’s no more powerful voice than First Lady Michelle Obama, who served this week as the keynote address for the Girl Up Leadership Summit, a three day event hosted by Girl Up, the United Nations Foundation’s adolescent girl campaign, which engages girls from around the world to stand up for each other and address issues that impact their lives. The Summit gathered celebrities, industry leaders and 225 youth from 29 states and 11 countries, all uniting a global mindset of doing good around the world in the name of women.
First Lady Michelle Obama addresses the Girl Up Leadership
From the second she took the stage, the First Lady was getting the type of attention that would make a rock star jealous; a sea of cell phones burst upward with cameras flashing as she neared the podium, all hoping to get a glimpse of the chief advocate.
Mrs. Obama’s was not short on the praise and encouragement for the audience of civic-minded youths. “You all should just feel good inside, you’re just getting started and look at all you have accomplished,” she praised. The First Lady was very much focused though in her appearance before the group with an eye forward and driving toward change. Her message was clear from the onset; all girls deserve access to education and the estimated 62 million girls worldwide who are not in school is a travesty that must be addressed. Whether it be financial burdens, geographic access or in some countries legal entitlement to education, the story needs to change about getting girls to school.
“Think about what it would be like to see your brothers, your male cousins, all going off every day to school while you were stuck at home. Imagine having to drop out of school at the age of 12 or 13 and marry some man in his 40s or 50s….so any chance you had to study the subjects that you love; math, English, art, science, all that would be gone.”
Mrs. Obama didn’t want to leave anyone discouraged however while facing what is quite accurately, a daunting task. She noted that you can’t focus on the number of problems, but rather solutions—“If all of you here today and watching by video went out and inspired just 10 girls and boys,” she said as her tone began to lift and she extrapolated the way that audience of advocates would compound across the world. “That’s the power you have right in this room…and suddenly 62 million doesn’t seem like such a big number.”
Melissa Hillebrenner
This was the exact point reinforced by Melissa Hillebrenner, Director of Girl Up as she spoke with Hollywood on the Potomac. “If those girls don’t do anything because the problem’s too big, then we do nothing. And honestly if you look at it, it’s worth it if we only impact the life of one girl. One life changed is worth it. So let’s tick away at that 62 million number one-by-one because every single girl is valuable enough for us to do this work” said Hillebrenner.
Take a look at more from First Lady Michelle Obama and Melissa Hillebrenner talking about their work championing for girls around the world:
