Save a Girl from Child Marriage with a Scholarship

Stacey S. is a World Concern partner who recently visited our Child Protection work in Bangladesh. The following post shows how your gifts are making a lasting, and tangible difference in the lives of girls at risk of child-marriage.    

I'd traveled a long way to visit with young Prishna.

I had heard many amazing things about a girl who had escaped child-marriage and was now helping others. 

The first thing I noticed about Prishna was how thin she was. She was much smaller than other teenage girls, and I discovered afterwards that it was because Prishna had been severely malnourished growing up. This was my first introduction to how devastating poverty in a country like Bangladesh can really be.

As people mingled around her, Prishna's head was down and her eyes fixed on the floor. But every once in a while she would look up and glance at me. 

Since she was just a little girl, Prishna’s family had planned to marry her off on her 10th birthday.  It sounded unbelievable to hear this, but for girls in the poor villages of Bangladesh it was frighteningly common to be passed off onto a complete stranger. Poverty forces families to do unthinkable things sometimes, but thanks to people like you girls are being saved. And Prishna was now showing other girls how to avoid this horror altogether.

Prishna is now a familiar face in the villages, as she bravely shares her story of escape with others. And her message is simple ... to say “NO”. She first rejected child marriage at the age of 10 ... then 11 ... and each year after that. By the time Prishna was 14, World Concern had helped her to stay in school. 

Your support gives girls like Prishna a chance to stay in school and avoid child marriage. But without you, families trapped in poverty have no other choice but to pull their daughters from school and marry them off to older men.

Today, Prishna wants to finish her studies and become a doctor. Her dream is that she will return to this community and ensure the families here have access to good health care.

As I listened to Prishna speak, I become even more empowered to stop this terrible practice. I decided it would start with me sharing her story, and so I'd encourage you to do the same because together we can stop child marriage by keeping these amazing girls in school.