Being a young person in today’s world is not always easy. The expectations of school, family, work, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, or social media can make growing up challenging. No matter where you live in the world, some of the struggles we face can be quite similar. International Day of the Girl Child is a great opportunity to recognize the challenges you face and embrace your rights.

Why is International Day of the Girl Child important?

Young, amazing and bright people like you should know about your rights and opportunities in this ever changing, crazy world we live in. Even with lots of resources available for young people, this is not the case everywhere and a lot of change still needs to happen, especially for girls. Check out some of these stats:

- Providing one extra year of education to girls increases their wages by 10- 20%.^[1]
- Every day, over 20,000 girls under the age of 18 give birth in developing countries, that's over 7 million a year.^[2]
- More than 233 million women were married before age 15.^[3]
- 2014 data shows that 41% or 25 million children of primary school age will never enroll in school – two thirds are girls.^[4]

It is quite shocking. But you can help by raising awareness on: getting a good education, avoiding childhood pregnancy by talking about contraception, avoiding childhood marriage, getting information on puberty, sexual health and gender based violence. It can sometimes be a bit embarrassing to ask or talk about these things, but it's important you do.

How to celebrate

It's time to get the girls together – and the boys too. Empower yourselves and take charge. With these fun and easy ideas you can make a difference:

Make a difference

Use your school or community center as a base. Why not organize an event with your besties. You could give a short presentation to your classmates – the more you talk about these issues, the more others will too! Get creative and make flyers to promote your event. Think about what you want to talk about – girls globally or locally, gender equality, or more specific issues like teen pregnancy and health rights. Invite a woman you look up to, to come and speak at your event. Talk to your mom, friends, mentors and see who would be the best fit. Or check out the World Contraception Day (WCD) Ambassadors Project, with young advocates all over the world who have own local initiatives to support the sexual and reproductive health rights of young people. They have some amazing people who could speak at your event.