a little while ago, not that far away, a young girl was on her way home from school. she was on the bus. laughing with her friends.

it was just an ordinary day. a regular school day until a stranger ste(ped onto the bus. he asked for the girl by namq malalla, and then the stranger took out a gun and shot her. malala yousufzai was shot in the head. >> one of the bravest girls in the world. >> now she is fighting to live. what had this girl done to make this stranger so angry? she had said something. something dangerous. something powerful.

she had said that all girls should be the school, knowledge is power, and ignorance is the enemy of change. >> this is wadley, she is 8

>> this is wadley, she is 8 years old. she plays herself in a story from her -jtu$at you are about to see. just like the other girls you will meet. soma, mariama, and esmera. two others who we'll call jasmine and amina could not appear in these stories out of concern for their safety. each of these girls was paired er own country to help to still her story. these are true stories. if sometimes re-imagined to capture the things these girls and these writers want you to see. and their stories are important

because these girls hold our future in their hands. if they a'd the millions of girls like them succeed in getting the kind of education they need, incredible things will happen. for them, for their families, for their community, for their but here's the hard truth. in spite of the fact that educating a girl is one of the highest return investments available in the developing world, there are 66 million girls out of school. so what exactly changes when girls in the developing world get a good education? everything.

>> the morning of janup)y 12th, 2010, was bright and beautiful. in a way that wadley could not remember any other morning ever having been before. it was the dry season when wildflowers bloomed and flowers that bloomed on their own without rain fascinated some little girls. it made impossible things seem possible. unachievable things appear doable. and the flowers, the hibiscus, the azaleas, the bougainvilleas, they all looked even brighter when wadley was happy. >> wadley!

wadley! wadley! >> that morning, wadley was working to memorize the final speech of toussaint louverture as he was removed from haiti by the french after he tried to win indepndence for the country. wadley liked to imagine herself defiant like brave toussaint louverture. but she also wished she had been given some words by women to recite. mother.nd strong women, like her

>> every day wadley brought two snacks from her mother's tray. one for herself and one for another child. ♪ that day, she chose a new friend, shelda. a girl whose father had been killed the week before. he was a taxi driver and someone had gotten into his car with a gun and asked him to get out. he had refused and the person had shot him. soon the moment came for wadley and her classmates to recite their quotes from the history lesson.

wadley watched as some of her friends recited, or failur recite. their stammers, stutters and hesitations seemed to her like a long poem, a love poem to history. >> wadley? >> that afternoon, all wadley could think was it was the dry season when wildflowers bloomed.

and these words seemed a perfect beginning for her composition. and a fitting book end to her day. for they seemed to emerge somehow out of the dream that she had been having that morning. [ female announcer ] think all pads are the same? don't.

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wadley could not remember how she and her mothe) got to the open field near the university. it was still the dry season, but wildflowers no longer bloomed. in the tent camp, she often heard the most dazed of the adults say, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. this, they said, when they were finally resigned to the fact that their missing loved ones would never be coming back. life tried to return to normal, except now her mother ran the city during the day looking for friends and family from whom to seek help. and instead of school, wadley went to the water fountain with a bucket.

every day now, as she passed through the camp and the ruins of her neighborhood, she thought sometimes as she walked by the ru!ble of the school itself, she thought she heard the voices of her friends reciting the lessons that she now missed so much. ♪ >> wadley?

>> mama. mama. >> money was still not completely clear to wadley. she knew that the)e was never enough of it. that some people had more of it than others, and that it determined in many cases how people looked at you and talked to you and treated you. it was the reason some people ate three meals every day while others ate every couple of days.

it was why she was learning now that some kids went to school and others did not. >> bye-bye, mommy. >> the next morning, wadley decided that she would go to school and sit on the bench in ith the others, no matter there was no money. that's what she would do. >> for a moment, wadley wondered how madam roy couldn't recognize her.

but the earthquake had twisted a lot of people's minds. many people did not even recognize themselves anymore. d8>> wadley decided that even though money could do many things, it was also a curse because only a cursed thing could keep her out of school. but she was not cursed. hadn't she been hearing from her mother and the others in the tent camp that those who had survived the earthquake were blessed?

surely it meant that she was supposed to do something special. ashes to ashes, dust to dust, she thought to herself. the next morning wadley started for the tent school again.

going to do. but she was determined to go and stay. >> and the flowers, the hibiscus, the azaleas, the bougainvilleas all looked even brighter when wadley was happy. they even seemed to thrive from it. ♪

listen, your story line, it makes for incredible tv drama. thing is, your drug use is too adult for the kids, so i'm going to have to block you. oh, man. yeah. [inhales] well, have a good one. you're a nice lady.

girls who go to school see immediate benefits beyond the things they are learning. being a student enhances their status in the community. it makes them safer. but in the developing world, getting a' education is not what people expect girls to do. girls are expected to work. expected to fetch water. to care for younger children. to get jobs. or worse. it happens to girls like suma.

her parents didn't send her to school. they sent her to work. it's called kamlari. ♪ >> i write songs to remind myself that my memories are real. and often because there's so much sadness behind me, what comes out is sad. both of my parents were bonded as kamlari in their childhood. that's the way things have been around here. that's the way they have been for the poor. you have to bond yourself to a master, otherwise, how will you live?

this was the house of my first master. my mother and father bonded me just so that i would have somewhere to live and enough food to eat. i was 6 years old. pagataru was a landlord and a miller.

he made me work from 4:00 in the morning until late at night. i had to clean the house and wash the dishes and go to the forest to fetch firewood. when i wasn't minding the goats, i had to mind the children. the goats were nicer. the daughters made fun of me because my clothes were torn. they teased me. they beat me. i wanted my mother and father to take me back. i wanted them to let me stay at home and go to school like my brother. but when i thought about $ow poor they were and how much they, too, had suffered, it made me feel weak. i couldn't ask.

this was the house of my second master. jonna camala wore a uniform to work. he and the mistress of the house were very $ard-hearted. unlucky girl, they used to call me. hey, unlucky girl, do this, they'd s$out. they made me sleep in the goat shed and wear rags and eat scraps from their dirty plates. i can't really talk about everything that happened to me here, but i will never forget. this is where i began to write songs. only the songs got me through.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

this was the house of my third master. i was 11 years old when i arrived at chitai's house. i had been a kamlari for five years. it wasn't as bad here. i mean it was bad because there was a lot of work, but there was a ladra in that house, a schoolteacher. he changed my life. he convinced my master and mistress to enroll me a night class. all of us would gather after finishing our day's work, and we would learn to read and write.

i loved that night class so much. it was run by social workers for girls just like me. kamlari's. we would also talk to the teachers about what it was like to be a kamlari and as we talked, we began to realize that bonded labor was, and isn't it, slavery. the teachers who ran the night class began to go from house to house. they wanted to liberate us. one teacher told my master that he was breaking the law by keeping me as a kamlari she talked about the law against bonded labor and the law about

children's rights. and the law on labor rights. and the law against domestic violence and trafficking. she talked to him about justice and injustice. and she demanded that he set me free. my master ápr" no. once made, a bond couldn't be broken. she didn't give up. she kept arguing. she came back day after day and in the end, she led me home to my mother and father. i am my own master 'ow. i have no mistress. i was the last bonded worker in my family.

after me, everyone will be free. i feel as though i have power. i feel like i can do anything. and i have important things to do. inside this house is a girl like i was. away from her parents working morning to night, wanting so badly to be free. we have come to this house, the house of her master, to say we know you have a kamlari working for you you must set her free. ♪

i've seen where change comes from. when it comes, it's like a song you can't hold back. suddenly, there's a breath moving through you and you are singing. and others pick up the tune and d8and a sweet melody goes out io the world and touches the heart of one person. then another. and another.

been illegal in nepal since 2000. >> look to the lens and smile. >> with the help of girls like suma, it's finally coming to an end. for suma, it is not enough that she herself is free. she's using her education to make sure all girls are getting to school. mom, dad told me that cheerios is good for your heart, is that true? says here that cheerios has whole grain oats that can help remove some cholesterol, and that's heart healthy. ♪ [ dad ] jan?

♪

when parents have to choose, they usually choose to educate the boys. so girls have less opportunity, less freedom, and less education than the boys they grow up with.

this means the girls suffer more hunger, more violence and more disease. d8there is nobody more vulnerab than a girl. and in far too much of the world, girls still suffer unspeakable things. girls like yasmin.

>> i had two pounds. >> i had two pounds. it was hot and we didn't want to walk. a man with a donkey cart said he would drive us to the roundabout to get juice. then when we were nearing the

roundabout, he turned off. we didn't know where he was going. he said don't worry, that it was a fast way. i got scared and ran away, but aya was not scared. >> we got to his house. i saw that his wife was there, too, so i didn't think anything bad would happen. he told her to bring us some drinks and then leave us alone.

there was juice like he promised, but it wasn't good. it tasted sour. he was drinking some beer, and i don't like it when people drink beer, so i got up to leave. but he stopped me and said he would take me home. we got back in the cart but he didn't take me home. he -- he took me to a very dark place. he told me he would not hurt me but that he wanted to be with me. he wanted -- and i said -- i told him i was not an ordinary girl. that i was a superhero, that i am powerful. but he did not believe me. he drew his sword and told me it was time that i should fight for my honor. and i told him that i did not want to kill him. because a true hero does 'ot kill.

he swung his sword at me, but i was too fast for him. i drew my knife from beneath my clothes and let him #eel the sharpness of my blade. he was strong, but i was stronger. he was fast, but i -- i was faster. i wanted to teach him a lesson. to show him that gi)ls are -- that we -- he jujt -- this man, he was a bad man. he left me no choice. ark place for a long time. he begged for me to -- to spare him.

so i spared his life. ♪

>> 50% o# all the sexual assaults in the world are on girls under 15. 50%. the risk of sexual assault is one reason parents keep girls at home or marry them off young. the man who raped yasmin is still free. she has never been to school, cannot read or write, and did we mention she's 13 years old.

♪

early marriage is the future d8for millions of girls. 14 million girls under 18 will be married this year. 38,000 girls married today. that's 13 girls in the last 30 seconds. ♪ >> look up. there is a child in the sky.

t$ere are angels. there are beliefs to challenge, wishes to be fulfilled. and here is a girl named azmera. feet grounded in ethiopian soil. and a young girl's life. her eyes turn toward possibility. azmera, named for harvest, golden crops, bounty, loved by family. intensely curious, painfully shy, stubborn and kind. not yet 14. trapped. look up.

there are myths among the clouds. a myth about a boy locked in a prison tower with his father. a famous maker of labyrinths. a father made his son wings from wax and feathers and told him to fly out of the window to don't fly too close to the sun, he warned. the wax will melt and you will fall. but the boy rose up, flew too high, then fell to the ground. the burning sun, the only witness to his descent. yth. this is a lesson about limits. it reminds us that man was not meant to fly. we cannot reach the sun with wings crafted from feathers and wax and desperation. but look.

zmera. she is in a life that is not p n a world with its own limits. she is the only living daughter of atenish. atenish was once the wife of a loving man and the mother of three. a son and two daughters. azmera, her youngest. her life was full. then her husband died. and then her eldest daughter. and atenish became a widow and a grieving mother left with nothing to remind her of those

she lost. no photographs. no drawings. no letters. what she has is azmera. and an older son. a'd an older son. a young man who loves his sister with the same devotion as their mother. what she's left with is the determination to give her surviving children what she can. the elders warned atenish that she was married young., unless give her hand, she was told. give her possibility. a chance to live. how much fear can one woman carry? how many children can she stand to bury? so when a man 20 years old and a stranger came to ask for

azmera's hand, atenish opened the door and let him in. she turned to the man and said, here is my daughter, and she held azmera and said, here is a chance. here is possibility. go. in ethiopia, this is how it was done when atenish was a girl. and when her own mother was a child. and when her grandmother was barely old enough to do more than play and fetch water. here it is said that if a girl is married too young, she is in danger of being split by her husband. 13 is considered to be a safe age, though the law says 18. girls as young as 7 have been married.

what does it mean trát&it a girl. it's like tearing a photo down hile each half witnesses the making of a ghost. what if a girl's life could be more? opes could mean something? what if a boy could look up into the sun without falling? look at this young man? he is not a myth. he is not a stranger to failed dreams. meselu was the son to a dying father. he left school at 7 years old to do the work of an adult. a farmer who wants nothing more than to be able to read. he once tried to leap past the edge of his world and fly away from it all.

but here is the heart of a man strong enough to return to his mother and his sister. he was in the fields working the day the man came for azmera's $and. he walked into the house and saw strangers talking to atenish and he knew what was happening. each of our stories pivot on a àsingle moment. that short pause between what is and what could be. in a breath, we can decide between what we wish to be true and what we can make happen. meselu said he would sell everything he owned to keep his sister in school, to give her to give her chances he never es, had.

o. and azmera stepped forward and told her mother, i want a better life. together they refused this marriage. i want to tell azmera the most important parts of this story about a boy trapped in a tower. the same son that brought this boy down raises you up and gives you strength. you can go as far and as high as you want as you are able to dream. it is not ambition that destroys us.

it is not hope that will lead us astray. you're a girl who has used her voice to say no. and every time you open a book, d8forward and up. we are from a country full of split girls. we must reach out with firm hands and hld them until the pieces fit again. you are showing them how to live by letting them hear you say i want a choice. and this life is mine to make. this is how it happens. one girl follows behind the other until together they move forward, towards something. a future.

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in a lot of the world, school isn't free. parents don't just have to pay for school. they have to buy books and uniforms. sometimes they pay for exams and report cards. for millions of families, it is simply too much. a girl born on planet earth today has a 1 in 4 chance of being bo)n into poverty. and without a good school, that is where she will stay. but the right education can change all of that. tráh(ower. just ask sena.

>> poetry is how i turn ugliness into art. dark into light. fear into will. i didn't learn this over the years as i learned math or history. i learned it all at once. in a swift kick to my heart.

>> it's a gold mining town. perched on the side of a dead volcano 17,000 feet up in the perpetual snow of the andes. they tell me my town is harsh. hazardous. the highest human habitation in the world. i don't know. my father named me after a famous warrior, zena. he had seen her on tv but since

she could beneath neither read nor write, he didn't know that her name started with an "x". he said that like her i would grow up to be a fearless defender of the poor, a heroine prepared to go war against ruthless man if honor demanded it. my father knew something about brave hearts for he, like all the men, was a minor. for 35 years, my father drilled

and dug, hunted tirelessly for a glimpse of glitter winking in the granite. but this mountain, she will trample the fiercest spirit, shatter the strongest back. i still don't know what happened that day. but i imagine it. a slab of ice, the rock on rock, the crush the, grind, the sudden black, and then the chopping dust, the toxic stink, the ai)lessness. returned to the mines. and each day after that he died a little bit more.

ài was barely 5 but the memory f that day still haunts me. as a shadow went over my father. as weeks went by and we grew desperate for money, my father became a cook and my mother took his place on the mountain. every day she and my sister jor'ed women who scrambled their way up to pound up rock. looking for go&d that the miners had missed. until night fell and coal was beneath their fingers. still my father insistq" that i go to school, learn all the things he hadn't. there's no hope for me, he would say.

ah, but there is for you. make a better person of yourself, senna. study. he made sure i saw what became of ma'y girls who did not go to school. it wasn't possible not to. beside every gold buyer stall was a loud raucous cantina and a àbusy brothel. miners squandered their gold as fast as they could find it. drunks staggered out of whore houses in the full light of day. i had heard about the thousands of girls sold to men in those many of them infected with aids. they seemed hard-faced,

wild-eyed, with an infinite sadness about them. i went to the man who owned the public toilets and begged him to give me work. he stalls by dawn, wash down each cubicle, scrub out the holes in the floor and take 20 centavos per person.

my father beamed whn he heard of it. of the makings of an engineer.l here, the engineers are the bosses, the owners, and the ones with all of the money. in truth, i was having a hard time at school. i was too worried to do anything but think about my father. with every day his health sanked to new lows.

one day my father told me that my mother would take us down the mountain to find anything to slow his racing pulse, stop the bold rallying cough that was threatening to claim him. he collapsed and died in my mother's arms. the bus at the foot of the of mountain. when my mother told us this, it was as if i had been punched in the chest, as if the ground beneath us had fallen away. for all the years that my family had climbed that frozen rock for all the gold that had been dugged out, burned, cleaned, sent to glitter around the world, we had never owned a flack of it. we were poor. bone poor.

the poorest family in a mud hole of poor people. i cursed the mountain, cursed the mines, cursed the gold buried beneath my feet. those words altered something in me. it was if i had a chance upon a buried treasure. each line stopped my heart.

page.orized every word on every in time, i saw that my father had been right all along. i was a fighter, brave and words made for mighty weapons. i began writing poems. i recited them for all my schoolmates to hear. i even won a poetry contest. i will be the engineer my father always wanted me to be. i will be a poet. i know now that the fortune my father sought so haplessly was always buried in me.

it was just a matter of finding it. ♪ >> fewer than half of the girls of the developing world will ever reach secondary school. by beating the odds, senna is beating the odds for girls in peru.

ok, well, remember last week when you hit vinny in the head with a shovel? [chuckling] i do not recall that. of course not. well, it was too graphic for the kids, so i'm going to have to block you. you know, i got to make this up to you. this is vinny's watch.

girls need good schools and they need to stay because a girl with one extra year of education can earn 20% more as an adult.

because women operate the majority of farms and small businesses in the developing world. if india alone enrolled 1% more of its girls in secondary school, their gdp would rise by billions. educated girls are a powerful force for change. with this kind of change, it happens fast. >> you're probably wondering, is that an ad for some charity? but i actualñy have a normal life for a teenage girl. i get up, i brush my teeth, i listen to rihanna, i pick my outfits, i text.

this is freetown, sierra leone. this is my mom and this was my dad. my dad died when i was really little. i like to think he still watches over me. this is my dad's younger brother. he had to marry my mom because she was his brother's widow. she could have said no. and then my uncle was really quite handsome so he became my stepdad. ew years later, papa married halla. now that was a love match from the start. i guess you could call us a perfect family and it's true.

but i am 16 and being a teenager is hard work because everyone's got problems. when my friends have problems, they call me. the truth is, solving problems is my thing. grees. and in sierra leone, problems aren't hard to find. sierra leone, it's probably because we've had so many. here's the lowdown. killed and hurt. everyone still talks about how frightening it was. but now things are getting better. in 2010, the president announced the celebration when we stopped being the poorest country in the world according to something called the human development

index. isn't my school cool? i'm the first person in my family to go to school. everyone says i'm lucky. lots of people think science is boring, but i don't. science is about asking questions and solving problems and, as you know, i like to solve problems. this is our physics teacher. you'd have to admit, he's quite cool. he told us about isaac newton, the biggest problem solver of all time. he sat under a mango tree. well, it was an apple tree but we don't have those so i like to think it was a mango instead. this newton guy asks, why does the mango fall down, not up? that's how he came up with the idea of gravity and his laws of motion. take his first law, every object in the state of uniform motion

tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. well, in other words, things ntil something makes it change. the most exciting change in my life was when i got my first spot as a host at eagle africa 91.3. >> you can call us if you want to. s the biggest thing in sierra leone. almost everyone listens to it. ♪ on the radio show i'm able to talk to lots of girls all over the country and help them. every week we discuss a problem. i mean real stuff.sics problem, one time a girl named satu called in. she lived with her aunt who used her to run errands instead of letting her go to school. even worse, her aunt's boyfriend

had a really bad wandering hand problem. poor satu didn't know what to do so she called the show. i thought about what i would do. i told her to tell her mom everything. to not be afraid. she wasn't doing anything wrong and that she should be going to school. a few weeks later she called to say she was back at home living with her mom and going to school. she said i helped her solve her problem. when i'm older, my plan is to have my own tv show, solving the greatest mysteries in the world. welcome to dr. mariama's mystery show in which i, mariama, find the solutions to the world's most biggest problems here in freetown in front of a live studio audience. my big dream is to go to outer space, to be the first african in space.

but the truth is, i'd never been on an airplane. actually, i have never e+en been to another country. but i'm not afraid to dream big. while i was busy dreaming, papa was having some problems of his own. he was being criticized by other radio show and staying out with friends from the radio station. one night when i was out, he found out where i was and stormed in. i've never seen him so angry. papa refused to let me host the show. i tried to talk my way out of it, which is something i can almost always do. but he didn't want to listen.

that night i didn't sleep. i told you my parents never went to school, right? well, what i didn't tell you was what halla told me, that people in those days thought kids who or their parents. i worried that maybe my father thought i had lost respect for him by having a job at the radio station. for the first time i had a problem i couldn't solve. my future plans had just been derailed by an external force. my father. i thought, what would isaac newton do? for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. newton's third law. i needed to find a force equa& to my father, someone my father would listen to.

maybe halla could be my force. so i borrowed a radio and turned it to eagle 91.3. i hated to hear the show going ithout me. $alla really listened. she liked what she heard. she told papa that he might have made a mistake. papa was still angry but he agreed to hear me out. i told them all the good things the radio show was doing, like the way i was able to help satu go back to her mother. by being on the radio, i could help even more girls like her. halla said i should have another chan(q together, we were a force to be reckoned with. finally, papa agreed to let me carry on with the show. only if i promised to come straight home afterwards and always let him or my moms know where i was. i was back on the air.

now everything is cool again. so you out there, watch this space because one day you're going to see dr. mariama's now there'áh'othing to stop me. nothing in the world. nothing in the universe because i am the lucky one. because i am the lucky one. mom, dad told me that cheerios is good for your heart,

is that true? says here that cheerios has whole grain oats that can help remove some cholesterol, and that's heart healthy. ♪ [ dad ] jan?

♪

here's an unsettling fact. the number one cause of death for girls 15 to 19, it's not aids. it's not hunger. it's not war. it's child birth. when girls marry young, education ends and the old cycles continue. cycles of poverty, cycles of violence, cycles of ignorance. but a girl who gets an education because she's going to stay healthier. she's going to get married later. she's going to have fewer and healthier children. and most of all, she's going to have educated children.

girls are not the problem. their proñlem soars. >> if my husband heard these words, he might kill me. so my father or my brother or anyone ju$ousands of my countrymen killed because i want to learn. killed because i want to read because i am a girl.truth now that i am no longer a child, i cannot show you my face.

i must wear a shawl of blue. i am a girl masked and muted. so what can you truly know of me? but i will speak. i will not be sile'ced. my story is like thousands of others. millions. no one bothered to record the date of my birth. as a girl, i'm considered set me aside in the dirt.

she already had one son but wanted another, wanted the status of being a bearer of boys. my mother never learned to read or write. she's never opened a book, never written in a diary, can't even decipher scribbles on the bag of rice. d8for me, 3 years old, i spent days working. my hands and face were chapped from carrying icy mountain waters to wash men's hands. i work before dawn, clean the house, wash the clothes, the dishes, i carried my siblings on d8enough to walk. i learned early to serve.

i learned early that this is the way things were always intended to be for the women of my family. a lifetime of servitude. my happiest times were the few short years of my education. i learned to read and write on crumbling stone wall.ed to a girls in other parts of my in tight control weren't allowed to go to school at all. weren't allowed to step outsides their homes. so i was always aware of my privilege. i was 11 years old when my father arranged for me to be married. my mind was of little value but

my body could settle a dispute to pay a debt. my body is a resource which can be spent for men's pleasure or profit. ave been married against my will for roughly $5,000. for that pricemy father offered me a marriage to a cousin. my mother approved the match. when the transaction was complete, they spent the money to buy a used car for my brother. i am an afghan woman and i know from history that it hasn't

always been this way. but i was born once upon a dark time. a time of one war sandwiched between two others. ju(ursq when the law prohibited flying kites, when there was no music, d8a time when an entire village watched and even cheered as teenage girls were stoned for the crime of falling in love. in afghanistan, most men give women power only as a vessel for other men. young mothers even douse their bodies with gas and set themselves aflame because they could not see a future.

on my wedding day, i tried to think about all of the many strong afghan women before me. i've heard about malili, women who lived 100 years ago. they could read a'd write. they spoke their own minds and were heroes for my country. but now i'm imprisoned in marriage. only allowed outside in this cover. there's no opening for my mouth to talk. my eyes are hidden beneath this embroidered cage. ♪ the first night of my marriage, my new husband barely spoke. and a seed he planted was not only the son he wanted but the anger that has grown in me ever since.

i vowed that night i would find a way not only to endure but to prevail. the midwife who delivered my son àwithout complications said i ws one of the lucky ones. more women die giving birth in afghanistan than any othq) place in the world. when i birthed the baby, praised allah a boy, i behaved beautifully. as i suckled his innocence at my breast, cupped his tiny feet in

my hands, all i felt was impatience because we are poor, because we are silenced, disenfranchised, beaten, cut, married as children, sold, raped, and when we seek freedom, we are burned. when we speak the truth, we are stoned. when we go to school, we are bombed, poisoned, shot. don't tell me it's simply has always been so. i don't believe in your resignation. i refused ignorance long ago. don't tell me you are on my side. your silence has already spoken for you. do not tell me to blame lies and my religion, in my culture, in my traditions.

i have not forgotten my vow. change is coming. i will read, i will learn, i will study, i will return to school i dare you to tell mq it's a waste of time. if you try to stop me, i will just try harder. put me in a pit. i will climb out. if you kill me, there will be other girls who rise up and take my place. i will find a way to endure, to prevail. the future of man lies in me. and this is the future i see. i am the beginning of a different story in afghanistan. and when my granddaughter

explains how i withstood the odds against me, it will become legend. oh yes, perhaps it will only be whispered at first, but just you watch. it will grow into a roar, an inexhaustible voice that will usher in a future. do you doubt me? do you underestimate my will? look into my eyes. do you see it now? i am change. amina joins many girls in afghanistan who have returned to

school despite the dangers. thanks to a new generation of leaders, men and women, there are more girls in afghanistan now than at any time in its history because amina refused to give up, just like soma and wadley, like senna and azmera, like girls everywhere. there are more stories, there are more facts and figures, but the simplest is the most important. educating girls works. [ female announcer ] think all pads are the same? don't.

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while making this film, we met hundreds of girls all over the world.

our partners on this journey were organizations large and small filled with extraordinary people who spent every day helping girls, trying to fill the gaps between what girls have and what girls need. each day they see what you've just seen. girls with fortitude and ourage, spirit and drive, girls succeeding against the odds. girls are rising. but there are millions who still need your help. the girls of the world need as much financial support as you can give. yes, they need money. any donation will change a you'g life. this is for sure.

the ten times ten fund supports the organization that supports girls, including our partners in making "girl rising," contributing to ten times ten, you send a powerful message that worth the investment. please join us. ♪

♪ z. too hot to handle. the colorado fires, the worst the state has ever seen spreading still this morning. firefighters in an all night battle. a new bombshell with 'ew accusations. spying on world leaders. we'll tell you the alleged targets. (ushed to the brink. now the miami heat, one loss away from a huge upset. could they really blow it? welcome to a special, efficient start. ài'm john