Monday, 11 July 2016, Ramallah: Palestine country office, in coordination and cooperation with Sharek Youth Forum and YPeer Palestine organized a film screening followed by a discussion to mark the day. Y-PEER hosted the film screening entitled “Girls Rising” (http://girlrising.com/ ) which took place at Sharek Youth Forum premises under the theme “Investing in Teenage Girls”. The stories of this film were of nine teenage girls from different parts of the world who live in bad conditions and face extremely tough situations ranging from early arranged marriages, to domestic violence, to slavery...etc. The girls’ catharsis were found through education and their persistence to pursue any kind of education.
Following the screening, youth who were present discussed two main points:
1. Education as being the solution, and how it helps to overcome or to challenge early marriage, and how education could give teenage girls the voice they never had. General discussion took place about education in general, and youth concluded that through education ideologies can be replaced with creative ideas, and ignorance can be replaced with a new enlightened worldview. A teenage girl who is succumbing to an early arranged marriage has more courage to refuse it because education is helping in building critical thinking for she comes to terms that marriage is not necessary when a teenage girl, but after graduation and getting degree.
2. Education as being the “falling dominos” . Education can be an idea that can be circulated rapidly peer-to-peer way; teenage girl who goes to school can easily offer almost the same education to deprived girls around her, and be a source of encouragement to others.
Despite the small number of attendees, the discussion was very successful and productive. World Population Day coincided with the results/scores of Tawjihi exams, and, therefore, many youth were unable to attend because they were either Tawjihi students themselves or they were celebrating with family members and/or relatives’ successes.
Hashtags:
Two hashtags were created #investinginteenagegirls and #becausetheydeserveit
