Want World Peace? Educate Our Girls.
There are children starving all over the world. The largest and hungriest group starving are girls. Many of them are not starving because their families can’t feed them, or because of lack of food. Many will spend their whole lives in this weak and hopeless condition of constant hunger; making them dependent on others for their very survival. They are starving, even when they are eating.
What they are hungry for is knowledge. Education. A chance to learn. To read, to write, to think beyond the walls of the barriers others have placed before them. There is freedom in education. There is power in knowledge. Learning creates choices.
A basic primary education is something taken for granted in the United States. In fact, educating children is expected, assumed and unlawful to ignore. Forcing our children out of bed in the morning and sending them to school (often against their will) is a daily occurrence all across our nation. We do not decide who gets to go to school based on gender. You live in the United States? You go to school. Period. We feel entitled to this basic right, for ourselves and our children.
What about the rest of the world? What about the other children? What about the millions of girls across this planet who are denied education simply because they are girls? What becomes of them? What is it like to be a little girl growing up in a world where education is a priviledge reserved for boys while you are told to spend your life in illiterate servitude? Who would you tell? How would you argue? (Writing a letter is out of the question when you can’t even write your name). Who will be your voice?
Why should we care?
If the simplified case for “doing the right thing” isn’t reason enough, here are some more;
Women make up at least half of the world’s population. In the United States, we are coming to understand more every day that women not only make the majority of purchasing decisions, but that companies with women leaders and women board members are more successful and more profitable. Women owned business is the fastest growing business segment today. Women make great, inclusive leaders. What’s more is that women use their wealth differently than men – they use it to better others and to better the world. Women, as they gain in success, bring others along with them. Women collaborate, connect and show the way for the next generation of daughters and sons.
By denying education for women, the world is denying itself from the opportunity of prosperity and world wide peace. That is a big deal.
The next time we think about those other people in other countries and the problem of starvation, let’s be clear and really think about how solve the unspoken hunger that is holding peace progress back. Starving tomorrow’s women of education and knowledge has a profound effect on the entire world. Want a peaceful world? Educate and support women.
Here is a great place to start: Check out Razia Jan at https://heroes.cnn.com/ and vote today and every day until the contest ends…want to make a real impact? You can vote 10 times per day, per email address and facebook…and you can invite your friends to vote as well.
As Razia Jan says of the girls she risks her life for every day in order to provide them love and education: “These girls must be educated. Once knowledge is learned, it can never be stolen.”
Women change the world when they share their knowledge with others and grow the next generation of amazing women.
YOU are the Difference
It was something of a revelation for me when I realized that I am not here to make a difference. I had spent most of my adult life with the idea of making a difference. Then the opportunity hit me – the opportunity to be in conversation with someone else who was also here to make a difference. I wanted to know how she was going to go about it when it suddenly struck me that it isn’t in the doing that matters. Like most other meaningful things, it is in the BEING. I am not here to make a difference. I am here to BE THE DIFFERENCE.
I speak fairly regularly on the subject of emotional intelligence and positive psychology. I am considered by some to be part of the “woo woo” crowd. I am in league with the people who talk about Universe and Energy and Creating Your Own Reality…the kind of stuff that sometimes makes the conventional world a little nervous. It’s okay, I am not here to argue and I enjoy being someone who appreciates others just as they are. I have a huge amount of faith in things being the way they are for a purpose (not always the same as a reason), while I still enjoy pondering possibilities of where we might be going next.
So, back to the question – how do I make a difference? How does anyone make a difference? My best conclusion is; By being the difference. Ghandi said it and I have read it a thousand times “be the change you wish to see in the world”…and yet what that really meant still didn’t strike home on a deep enough level for me to really feel its meaning. Sometimes we need to get out of our analytical brains and just let things sink in a little deeper.
Want a kinder world? Be kind and see the kindness in others. Want a world where people don’t judge and hold each other with regard? You know what to do; build this in your own heart and mind first. You may have to break through some (or a lot) of ideas and beliefs that you currently hold, but it will be worth it. You might lose some friends and other people along the way but there will be more like you to find. Lead by example. Be the difference. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing, thinking or saying. You are up to YOU.
YOU are the Difference.
Women change the world when they fully embrace who and what they are and refuse to be anything less.
How Old are You Now?
I found myself walking up to the gates of the mecca of childhood memories; the Magic Kingdom. The happiest place on Earth. Home of Mickey Mouse and his make believe friends dreamed up by a genius many years ago – the one and only Walt Disney. This wasn’t a dream – this was my 46th birthday present given to me by my husband. A day of play. A day to be a kid again. A day to return to the land of imagination. A full day at Disneyland to indulge the child within!
When is the last time you took the time to connect to your inner child and let her/him run wild? I highly recommend this practice on a regular basis.
I spend much of my time leading teams, solving problems, growing businesses, thinking strategically, collaborating with others to create positive change in the world and in ourselves. There is structure and planning and attention to the details as a regular part of my busy schedule. While I completely enjoy what I am doing in my life, there comes a time when the goal is to simply PLAY.
So there I stood, at the gates. I could hear the music inside and could see the Mickey Mouse flowerbed just beyond the turnstiles that would grant us access. I looked at my husband with anticipation (this was a trip he had planned without letting me know where we were going) and I felt my eyes fill with tears. Suddenly confused he asked “Why are you crying?”
It had happened. The little girl who lives inside my heart was awake and alive. She knew where she was. She knew that just beyond those gates would be the ultimate playground with the brilliance of Walt Disney come to life and she would get to be there ALL DAY until she was too tired to continue. She could hardly stay contained and so my eyes filled with tears of excitement.
“I have to warn you”, I said, “the first few minutes in the Magic Kingdom I will cry, but it is just pure happiness and the freedom to let go of my grown up self and just be a kid again.” He smiled and knew that he was in for a day like no other.
He was. We were. We both were 40 years younger on my birthday this year.
The moral to this story? When you get the chance to play, play full out. Be where you are in all of its glory. Let go. Be a kid. I was the only child over three feet tall waiting for my picture with Pluto that day and it is a moment I thoroughly enjoyed.
Want to work hard and change the world? Play even harder so you will have the joy and release you need to take on the bigger things when the time comes back around again…it makes a difference – cross my heart and pinky promise!
Women change the world when they embrace the child within; accepting her, nurturing her and letting her play!
Start Something!
and to start a blog in mid-sentence is poor English and somewhat confusing to the reader.
Wouldn’t you agree? Me too – but I’m not going to let anything get in my way today…not even the challenge of not knowing where or how to start.
Writing a blog article is an interesting process most days. And then there are the other days. The days when you sit down with a whirlwind of ideas and none of them come out in a sensible form and so you sit and wait for some semblance of order to materialize. Sometimes it comes. Others times it doesn’t and the first sentence becomes the hardest one to write.
Life can be like that too. You get a yearning, a calling, an urging to get going and do something else, something important, something that you will look back on and know your time was spent in high value but the ideas get mixed together and the start line doesn’t magically appear and so you sit in limbo – a special kind of stuckness full of “reasons” of why you can’t get going. What do you do? Trust yourself. Start something. Start in mid-sentence if the first part is too elusive. Just start. Make a move. Break the mold of stuckness. Once you are in motion, it is easier to alter your direction and make adjustments. Align yourself with good intention, take a deep breath and…Start something. Every decision to break out of stuckness and into action will get you that much closer to where you are going.
Women Change the World with Determination and Action.
The Wrong Message: Competition
I was flipping through the television channels last night and working through my disappointment at the lack of quality programming to choose from when something started to really stand out to me bigger than it has before: the Competition Stereotype of women on television is alive and raging!
Four Weddings; a new show where four brides tear at each other’s happiness and special day through competing for the “best” wedding! (I thought weddings were about vows and commitment and love?)
Toddlers in Tiara’s; beautiful young girls and their horrifying mother’s teaching them to be ruthless pieces of eye candy.
Dance Mom’s; really? Can you create a bigger emotional and self-esteem roller coaster for your daughters to live through?
Housewives of ___________; does it matter which city these back-stabbing, materialistic, small minded people live in?
The list goes on and on. Women have been taught to compete against each other; to see each other as the enemy. This is how women have been belittled, controlled and kept out of board rooms, and out of the leadership roles where they can change and improve the world. They have been taught not to trust each other and to even not trust themselves. This image that we tolerate and (gulp) support through complacency is holding us back.
Women naturally support each other. It starts with giving birth and nurturing and loving and growing another human being. This is what we naturally do. We create communities. We feed each other, care for each other, encourage each other. We are love based in our natural state.
Unless of course we buy into the messages fed to us by those who want to keep us suppressed in fear, mistrust and competition. Competition is fear based.
Connection. Collaboration. Community. Leadership. This is where women excel when they are supported and given the chance to be who they were born to be. I am disappointed at what so many otherwise intelligent people label as “entertainment” – it has a way of desensitizing the mind and creating a feeling of “normalcy”. We are what we think we are.
Women change the world when they embrace who and what they are and refuse to be anything less.
