Let us hope that life will get better for these girls, that they will be able to get an education, and thus have their dreams come true.
What Syrian Refugee Girls Want To Be When They Grow Up
Posted: 11/10/2015 07:12 AEST Updated: 11/10/2015 07:12 AEST
What do you want to be when you grow up?
It's a question I often ask the girls and young women I lead as a Girl Guide volunteer and I love the conversation it sparks. I love hearing about their ambitions, or digging deeper into the things they love to do, want to study and make a career of. Occasionally, just occasionally, I might despair at a lack of diversity among the gender roles they'll share with me, or muse that women still have a long way to go.
All in all, however, the young women and girls I volunteer to empower have a vast array of choices open to them and I'm old enough now to have seen a good many of them embark on, and excel at their chosen path.
Earlier this year, a world away from the usual Girl Guide halls or open-air camps, I asked the same question of teenage girls at a life skills program for victims of sexual violence in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, just a short drive away from the Syrian border. I had braced myself for meeting these girls. What could I possibly know of their all-too-young experiences? What, I pondered, does one say to teenage girls who have been raped, abused, or sold into early marriages with disastrous consequences? My expectations were of timid creatures who would avert their gaze and shun my ridiculously inane questions about their futures.
Continue reading at:
What Syrian Refugee Girls Want To Be When They Grow Up
What Syrian Refugee Girls Want To Be When They Grow Up
Posted: 11/10/2015 07:12 AEST Updated: 11/10/2015 07:12 AEST
What do you want to be when you grow up?
It's a question I often ask the girls and young women I lead as a Girl Guide volunteer and I love the conversation it sparks. I love hearing about their ambitions, or digging deeper into the things they love to do, want to study and make a career of. Occasionally, just occasionally, I might despair at a lack of diversity among the gender roles they'll share with me, or muse that women still have a long way to go.
All in all, however, the young women and girls I volunteer to empower have a vast array of choices open to them and I'm old enough now to have seen a good many of them embark on, and excel at their chosen path.
Earlier this year, a world away from the usual Girl Guide halls or open-air camps, I asked the same question of teenage girls at a life skills program for victims of sexual violence in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, just a short drive away from the Syrian border. I had braced myself for meeting these girls. What could I possibly know of their all-too-young experiences? What, I pondered, does one say to teenage girls who have been raped, abused, or sold into early marriages with disastrous consequences? My expectations were of timid creatures who would avert their gaze and shun my ridiculously inane questions about their futures.
Continue reading at:
What Syrian Refugee Girls Want To Be When They Grow Up
