{"id":22710,"date":"2017-08-22T07:25:51","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T11:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22710"},"modified":"2017-08-22T07:25:51","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T11:25:51","slug":"shining-a-light-on-girls-education-with-girl-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22710","title":{"rendered":"Shining a Light on Girls’ Education with ‘Girl Rising’"},"content":{"rendered":"

In these challenging days, any positive action we can take feels fundamental, essential. The overwhelming tide of events we have little control over is helped only by doing whatever we can, however small, however local, to make things a little better near us. On Thursday evening, August 17, we were all still reeling from the terrible attack\u00a0in Charlottesville and the escalating nuclear threats and counter-threats, so were grateful to have\u00a0something inspiring to look forward to: an event with award-winning nonfiction author, Tanya Lee Stone<\/a>, presenting a partial screening of the Girl Rising documentary<\/a> and\u00a0her book, Girl Rising: Changing the World, One Girl at a Time<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>The event was a fundraiser for Vermont Works for Women, a local organization dedicated to improving the lives of girls and women in our state by providing education, programming, and advocacy to create economic equality and opportunity.
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\nWe held the event offsite at the Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center<\/a>, an amazing venue\u00a0near the Burlington Waterfront that offers\u00a0a film house among its other event spaces. After being introduced, Tanya showed the audience two chapters from the film documentary, then talked about how her book came to be.\u00a0She said that, inspired by the movie, she found herself wondering how much material had had to be left out of the film. Just nine girls were featured in the final cut, but the filmmakers had traveled the globe looking at all of the obstacles to girls’ education\u2014from poverty to child marriage to human trafficking\u2014so they must have interviewed many, many more girls.
\nStone said she cold-called the film’s creators, and their responses to her questions inspired her further. Could she tell the stories of some of the girls who weren’t included in the film? They sent her the raw footage of all of their interviews \u2014 hundreds of hours’ worth \u2014 and her research began. The result was the beautiful Girl Rising: Changing the World, One Girl at a Time<\/strong><\/em>.
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\nThe book is powerful, inspiring, intense, and\u00a0motivating. Publishers Weekly<\/em> said, “Stone delivers a frank, hard-hitting exploration of why some 62 million girls worldwide don\u2019t attend school… a vivid, heartrending portrait of resilience in the face of tremendous obstacles.”\u00a0Booklist<\/em>‘s starred review noted, “Much more than a companion volume to the 2013 semidocumentary of the same title… this vibrant book stands on its own as a source of inspiration… tells the girls\u2019 backstories with empathy and grace… provides heartening updates and illuminates the context of the struggle….The closing chapter is a call to activism, and close-up full-color photos of the girls profiled will let young readers connect even more…. Readers may be moved to initiate projects of their own.<\/span>“<\/i>
\nThe book itself is an act of activism: Random House\/Wendy Lamb Books donates a portion of the proceeds of each book to the Girl Rising<\/a>\u00a0foundation, which provides financial\u00a0support for the education of the girls in the documentary and their families. And our ticket sales and half of the book proceeds from the event we held go to Vermont Works for Women.
\nThe audience was a broad mix of ages, from young teens to senior\u00a0adults, all of whom care deeply about girls’ education and opportunity. VWW did a great blog interview with Tanya in advance of the event. Here’s a snippet:<\/p>\n

When asked the question of why girls? Why education and why now? Tanya responded, \u201cThat\u2019s easy; educating girls is the single most powerful tool we have to change this world.\u201d She went on, \u201cIt changes the way villages, towns, communities, governments, nations behave. When a greater percentage of females in any population around the world are more educated, everything changes: the economy changes, the legislation changes, everything changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Overall, Tanya\u2019s hope is that younger people will become increasingly aware: \u201c[The girls in\u00a0Girl Rising<\/em>] are\u00a0not \u2018other\u2019 girls, they\u2019re not in other places, they are just girls, girls who have every right to be going to school.\u201d And if they have access to school and education, they will change their futures and our world. It is essential that we all remember that the girls in the film Girl Rising<\/em>, the girls in the book\u00a0Girl Rising<\/em>, the girls that our children go to school with, the girls that we serve every day at VWW, are, like Tanya has said, just girls.<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.
\nIt felt so good to spend an hour and a half together, celebrating girls’ resilience and determination, and to feel galvanized. Tanya’s presentation left everyone incredibly moved. We were so appreciative of Tanya, of the Vermont Works for Women folks, and of the Main Street Landing owners, all of whom poured beautiful effort into the event, sharing their time and talents.\u00a0As my dear pal Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice<\/em>,\u00a0\u201cHow far that little candle throws [her]\u00a0beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.\u201d I like to think that the young people who saw the film selections and heard Tanya speak left feeling empowered, strong, and maybe even newly appreciative of their upcoming school years.
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Vermont Works for Women’s Amy Caldwell and Wendy Rice and the Flying Pig’s me and Emily Copeland standing behind author Tanya Lee Stone after a terrific\u00a0event!<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A heartening evening in a challenging week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}