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 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 azmera, too, would die, unless she was married young. 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 to split a girl. it's like tearing a photo down the middle while each half witnesses the making of a ghost. what if a girl's life could be more. what if a mother's hopes 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 hand. he walked into the house and saw strangers talking to atenish and he knew what was happening. each of our stories pivot on a single 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 the gift of a life with choices, to give her chances he never had. he told atenish, no. 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, you continue your journey forward and up. we are from a country full of split girls. we must reach out with firm hands and hold 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. [ female announcer ] think all pads are the same? don't. [ woman ] the technology in these pads... best creation ever!

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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 born into poverty. and without a good school, that is where she will stay. but the right education can change all of that. knowledge is power.

just ask senna. >> poetry is how i turn ugliness into art. dark into light.

>> 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, xena. he had seen her on tv but since he could neither read or write he didn't know her name started with an x. he said that like her i would

grow up to be a fearless defender of the poor. a heroin prepared to go to war. my father knew something about my father knew something about brave hearts for he like all the men was a miner.

for 35 years my father drilled and dug and hunted in the granite. this mountain will shatter the spirit. i still don't know what happened that day but i imagine it. the slab of ice, rock on rock, the crash, the grind, the sudden black and then the choking dust, the toxic stink. the airlessness. i can hear my father's groans.

he survived but he never returned to the mines and each day after that he died a little bit more. i was barely five but the memory of that day still haunts me as if i shadow had fallen over my father. as weeks went by and we grew desperate for money my father became a cook and my sister took his place on the mountain. every day she and my sister joined the other women who scrambled up the rock looking for gold the miners had missed until night fell and cold stiffened their fingers.

still my father insisted that i go to school. learn all the things he hadn't. there's no hope for me he would say, but there is for you. make a better person of yourself senna, study. he make sure i saw what became of many girls that did not go to school. it was impossible not to. beside every goal was a loud cantina. by every cantina was a busy brothel. miners squandered their gold as soon as they could find it. drunks staggered out of whore houses in the full light of day.

i had heard about girls sold to those places, many of them infected with aids. they seem wild eyed with an infinite sadness about them. i went to the man who own the public toilets and begged him to give me work. my job was to get to the stalls by dawn, wash down each cubicle, scrub out the holes and take 20

cent per person. my father beamed when he heard of it. you see he growled. you have all the makings of an engineer. the engineers are the bosses, the owners and the ones with all the money. in truth, i was having hard time at school. i was having a hard time thinking about my father. with every day his health sank to new lows. one day my mother told us that she would take my father down the mountain to find a shaman,

an herb, anything to stop the bone rattling cough that was threatening to claim him. he collapsed and died in my mother's arms shortly after they got at the foot of the 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 clean, send to glitter around the world, we had never owned a fleck 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 poem, those words altered something in me. it was as if i had chance upon a cash of buried treasure.

each page open a world, each line stop my heart. i memorized every word on every page. 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 torch my father fought so helplessly was so buried in me. it was just a matter of finding it. >> fewer than half the girls in the developing world be ever reach secondary school. by beating the odds senna is writing a new chapter for girls in peru. 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?

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. this kind of change it happens fast. >> you're probably wondering is that an ad for some charity. i actually 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. welcome to my world. 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 or she could have become a praying wife which is sort of like being a wife without the fun, but then my uncle was really quite handsome so he became my step dad. a few years later papa married hawa. that was a love match from the start.

i guess you could call us the perfect family, and it's true. i'm 16 and being a teenager is hard work because every one's got problems. when my friends have problems they call me. the truth is solving problems is my thing. everyone agrees. in sierra leone problems aren't hard to find. in fact, if you've heard of sierra leone probably because we've had so many. here is the lowdown. not that long ago we had a war and people were killed. everyone still talks about how

frightening it was. now things are getting better. in 2010, the president announced a 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 the lucky one. 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 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 apple tree but we don't have those so i think of mangos instead. he said why do they fall down and not up. that's when he came up with the law of gravity and motion.

take his first walk. every object in the state on uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless than external force is applied to it. in other words things stay the same until something makes them change. the most exciting change in my life is when i got my first real job. i was so happy when i landed a spot as a host at eagle africa 91.3. these days radio is 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 don't mean a physics problem.

i mean real stuff. one time a girl 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. she 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 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 miracle mystery show in which i find solutions to the most vexing problems filmed in front of a studio audience. my big dream is to go to space to be first african in space.

the truth is i've never been on an airplane. actually, i've never even been to another country. 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 people in my town about me hosting radio show and staying out at night with my 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? what i didn't tell you was what i was told is that people in those days thought people who went to school lost respect for their parents. i worried that maybe my father thought i 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's an equal and opposite reaction. newton's third law. i needed to find a force equal to my father.

someone my father would listen to. maybe hawa could be my force. i borrowed a radio and turned it to eagle 91.3. i hated to hear the show going on without me. she 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 him all the good things the radio show is doing like how i was able to help her go back to mother. by being on the radio i could help even more girls like her. hawa said i should have another chance. 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

after the show and let him or my moms know where i was. i was back on the air. now everything is cool again. you out there watch this face because one day you're going to see dr. mariama's miracle mystery show. now there's nothing to stop me, nothing in the world. nothing in the universe. because i am the lucky one. >> because i am the lucky one. it's not a candy bar.

130 calories 7 grams of protein the new fiber one caramel nut protein bar.

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 childbirth. when girls marry young education ends and the old sooik ls continue. cycles of poverty, cycles of violence. cycles of ignorance. a girl that gets an education starts a different cycle because she's going to stay healthier. she's going to get married later. she's going to have fewer and healthier children.

most of all, she's going to have educated children. girls are not the problem. they're problem solvers. >> if my husband heard these words he might kill me. my father or my brother or anyone of thousands of my countrymen. killed because i want to learn. killed because i want to read. for uttering my own truth. because i am a girl.

now that i'm no longer a child i cannot show you my face. i must wear this shroud of blue, a shell. i am a girl masked and muted. what can you really know of me. but i will speak. i will not be silenced. my story is like thousands of others, millions. no one bothered to record the date of my birth. as a girl i was considered unworthy of a record. i am told my mother burst into

tears when she learned my sex. set me aside in the dirt. she already had one son but wanted another, wanted the status of being the 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 the scribbles on a bag of rice. from the age of three years old i spent my days working. i hands and face were chapped from carrying icy mountain water to wash mens hands. i woke before dawn, cleaned the house, washed the clothe, dishes. i carried my siblings on my back until they were old enough 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 an old blackboard fixed to a crumbling stone wall. girls in other parts of my country where the taliban were in tight control weren't allowed to go to school at all, weren't allowed to step outside 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, pay a debt. my body is a resource which can be spent for men's pleasure or profit. no one carried that i had been married against my will for 250,000 afghanis or for $5,000. for that price my father offered me in 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'm an afghan woman and i know from history that it hasn't always been this way but i was born one upon a dark time. a time of one war sandwiched between two others. an eye for an eye ignorant time. when the law prohibited flying kites, when there was no music, dancing, no joy. a time when entire villages watched and cheered when teenage girls were stoned for falling in love. in afghanistan most women give power only as a vessel for other men. young mothers even doused 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 many strong afghan women before me. i've heard about malala, ana, women who lived a hundred years ago. they could read and write, spoke their own mind 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 new marriage my husband barely spoke and the seed he planted was not only the son he wanted but the anger that's grown in my ever since. i vowed that night i would not only find way to endure but to prevail. the midwife who delivered my son without complications said i was one of the lucky ones. more women die giving birth in afghanistan than any other place in the world. when birth the baby praise allah praise innocence.

as i cupped his feet, all i felt was impatience. impatience because we are poor because we are silenced, disenfranchised, beaten, cut, married as children, sold, raped. when we seek freedom we are burned. when we speak truth we are stoned. when we go to school we are bombed, poisoned, shot. don't tell me it simply has always been so. i don't believe in your resignation. i refused ignorance long ago. don't tell me you're on my side. your silence has already spoken for you. do not tell me to blame lies in 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 me 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 way to endure, to prevail. if future of man lies in me, and this is the future i see. i am the beginning of a different story in afghanistan. when my granddaughter explains

how i with stood 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 brighter future. do you doubt me? do you underestimate my will? look into my eyes. do you see it now? i am change. >> amina joins millions of girls in afghanistan who have returned to school there in spite of dangers. thanks to a new generation of leaders, men and women, there

are more girls in school in afghanistan now than at any time in its history because amina refused to give up just like suma 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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also available in delicious peanut butter. in parks across the country, families are coming together to play, stay active, and enjoy the outdoors. and for the last four summers, coca-cola has asked america to choose its favorite park through our coca-cola parks contest. winning parks can receive a grant of up to $100,000. part of our goal to inspire more than three million people to rediscover the joy of being active this summer. see the difference all of us can make... together.

while making this film we met hundreds of girls all over the world. our partners in this journey were organizations large and small filled with extraordinary people who spend 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 courage, spirit and drive. girls succeeding against the odds. girls are rising. 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 young life. this is for sure. the ten times ten fund for girls education supports the organizations that support girls including our partners in making "girl rising."

contributing to ten times ten you send a powerful message that you strongly believe that we all strongly believe that girls are worth the investment. please join us. ♪

she needs to get -- let her burn. >> you see so much manipulation, so many lies and so many con artists in here, this is just like a snake pit. >> i've been doing this so long, you'd think i would learn. you know? >> it's the same old thing every day. it's aw hard way to live. jail is terrible. it's no place to be. but you know, we keep making the decisions to come back.