Speaker 1: Bushkin im Ave Higgins, and this is solvable. Interviews with
Speaker 1: the world's most innovative thinkers who are working to solve
Speaker 1: the world's biggest problems. My solvable is to end child
Speaker 1: marriage globally by the year two thousand to thirty. That's
Speaker 1: Mabel van Uranier, and she is trying to solve a
Speaker 1: problem which is bigger than you might think. Child marriage
Speaker 1: is a worldwide problem. Globally, one in five girls are
Speaker 1: thought to be married as children. That means that about
Speaker 1: twelve million children are getting married every year. Child marriage
Speaker 1: happens everywhere, including right here in America. It was only
Speaker 1: last year that Delaware and New Jersey became the first
Speaker 1: states to outlaw marriage for anyone under the age of eighteen.
Speaker 1: The state of Missouri as the most lenient law in
Speaker 1: the nation that allows fifteen year olds to wed with
Speaker 1: only one parent signature required. But child marriage happens most
Speaker 1: often in developing countries. The problem cuts across ethnic, cultural
Speaker 1: and religious lines and can be found everywhere from Africa
Speaker 1: to the Middle East, Asia to Europe, and like I
Speaker 1: mentioned here, in America. UNISEPT says that marriage before the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen often amounts to a fundamental violation of
Speaker 1: human rights. There are many things that increase the risk
Speaker 1: that a child will get married, including poverty, the idea
Speaker 1: that marriage will provide protection, social norms and ideas about
Speaker 1: family honor, or even just customary or religious laws that
Speaker 1: condone child marriage. Countries like Niger and the Central African
Speaker 1: Republic and Bangladesh, they have among the highest rates of
Speaker 1: child marriage in the world, and they're all struggling with
Speaker 1: the multitude of other issues too. In today's episode, you'll
Speaker 1: hear Mabel talking mainly about girls. Boys being married is
Speaker 1: of course a violation of their rights too, but it's
Speaker 1: far more common for girls. Child marriage is often driven
Speaker 1: by patriarchal values and the desire to control female sexuality,
Speaker 1: and the consequences of a child marriage well, they can
Speaker 1: be devastating. Pregnancy is consistently among the leading causes of
Speaker 1: death for girls aged fifteen to nineteen worldwide. Girls who
Speaker 1: marry before eighteen are more likely to experience domestic violence
Speaker 1: in their peers who marry later, and it often has
Speaker 1: a terrible effect on the girl's mental health too. So
Speaker 1: this is an extremely worthy solvable that I'm really glad
Speaker 1: we're discussing Mabel van Uranier has been a global advocate
Speaker 1: for freedom, justice and development for more than twenty years,
Speaker 1: and most recently she's thrown herself into her work as
Speaker 1: the initiator and chair of Girls Not Brides, the Global
Speaker 1: Partnership to End Child Marriage. Now that partnership is between
Speaker 1: more than twelve hundred organizations in more than ninety five countries,
Speaker 1: and they're all committed to ending child marriage and enabling
Speaker 1: girls to fulfill their potential. Oh and you'll hear Mabel
Speaker 1: mention the Elders in a moment. And in case you
Speaker 1: haven't heard of them, the Elders were set up by
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela as a kind of a supergroup of former
Speaker 1: heads of state. They all worked together now for peace,
Speaker 1: justice and human rights, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter,
Speaker 1: basically all of the coolest older people that we've got.
Speaker 1: That's the Elders. And from two thousand and eight until
Speaker 1: two and twelve, Mabel was CEO of the Elders. That's
Speaker 1: when she began to focus on her solvable, which is
Speaker 1: ending child marriage. All right here she is now in
Speaker 1: conversation with Jacob Weisberg. Child marriage is happening every year
Speaker 1: to twelve million girls all over the world. That means
Speaker 1: a girl almost every two seconds getting married, and so
Speaker 1: the number of child brides is not only enormous, but
Speaker 1: the consequences are really devastating. I know countless stories of
Speaker 1: girls who told me that their wedding day was the
Speaker 1: day they had to leave school. It was the day
Speaker 1: that they were shipped off to live with a family
Speaker 1: of a husband who they had never met before, who
Speaker 1: is older in age often and they go live with
Speaker 1: their in laws then, and you know, for them, their
Speaker 1: wedding night is could be the night they get pregnant,
Speaker 1: even though they themselves are a still a child. And
Speaker 1: so what you then see is that there's a disproportional
Speaker 1: high problems around maternal health and even maternal death. For
Speaker 1: child brides. The chances that their babies will survive are
Speaker 1: much lower than women who have their first child after
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen. They're more often becoming the victims
Speaker 1: of violence domestic violence by the hands of their husbands
Speaker 1: or their in law. In some cases, it seems like
Speaker 1: they're more likely to become HIV infected. And so what
Speaker 1: child marriage really is for these girls is turning from
Speaker 1: what was maybe a life with a reasonably bright future.
Speaker 1: Turning their lives basically into hell. Now that's happening on
Speaker 1: a massive skill. But what it also means is that,
Speaker 1: you know, as a world, we have said we want,
Speaker 1: you know, to achieve the STGs. Now, eight out of
Speaker 1: these seventeen sustainable development goals, including education, including maternal health,
Speaker 1: including infant health, including violence, et cetera, et cetera, they're
Speaker 1: linked to child marriage. And so the idea that we
Speaker 1: can ever get every girl into school, or that we
Speaker 1: can ever reduce maternal mortality if we continue to ignore
Speaker 1: the issue of child marriage, it's just a dream. So
Speaker 1: I believe ending child marriage wouldn't only be really good
Speaker 1: for these twelve million girls, but it also means that
Speaker 1: if we ever want to eradicate poverty, we need to
Speaker 1: make sure that these girls actually can live productive, healthy,
Speaker 1: happy lives. So I'm curious, Mabel, what brought you personally
Speaker 1: to this problem. Why child marriage the thing that you've
Speaker 1: committed your life to salving. Well, it happened when I
Speaker 1: was working in twenty ten for the Elders, you know,
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela's organization of eminent former presidents, prime ministers, etc.
Speaker 1: And they, the elders, had said, we want to work
Speaker 1: on gender inequality. They felt that that gender inequality is
Speaker 1: the biggest injustice of the twenty first century, and they
Speaker 1: specifically wanted to look at that through the lens of
Speaker 1: how religion and tradition, which are normally forces for good
Speaker 1: in our lives, too often religion and tradition get misused
Speaker 1: to justify discrimination against girls and women. And so they
Speaker 1: spoke out about that. It got a lot of traction,
Speaker 1: and then we started looking at like, is there in
Speaker 1: this whole issue of gender inequality a specific example that
Speaker 1: would benefit from getting the attention of the elders, but
Speaker 1: that isn't yet kind of on the global agenda, And
Speaker 1: at some point I was I was therefore, looking at
Speaker 1: what could the elders do, and having lunch with a
Speaker 1: friend and we started talking about child marriage. Was I thought,
Speaker 1: it's interesting the two words say it, oh, child marriage.
Speaker 1: But at the same time I also thought, it's interesting
Speaker 1: you never hear about it. You know, you would go
Speaker 1: to these big un conferences about education, or about health,
Speaker 1: or about development, and the word child marriage was rarely,
Speaker 1: rarely uttered, And so I thought, I'm curious, is this
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand girls a year? Is it maybe half
Speaker 1: a million girls a year? Maybe a million girls a year,
Speaker 1: And when we then found out it's actually twelve million
Speaker 1: girls a year, I felt like, this is crazy. How
Speaker 1: can there be a problem that is so big that
Speaker 1: it is having such a huge impact on poverty eradication
Speaker 1: and it's completely ignored. And I think that's partially because
Speaker 1: because these girls are more or less invisible. You know,
Speaker 1: they often they they're miners, they don't speak English in
Speaker 1: many cases, they live in far away rural places. So
Speaker 1: for them to organized and put their issue on the
Speaker 1: global agenda is just impossible if you think about, you know,
Speaker 1: the success of the eighths movement, for example, to a
Speaker 1: large extent that was driven by men infected by the
Speaker 1: HIV virus who really put the issue on the global agenda.
Speaker 1: I think another reason why child marriage wasn't really getting
Speaker 1: the attention it deserved was because it's driven by complex issues.
Speaker 1: People do it either because of tradition, so you know,
Speaker 1: you do it because your generation and the generation before
Speaker 1: you on the generation before them has always done this,
Speaker 1: and so people don't really think about it, or people
Speaker 1: do it because they're concerned about the sexual safety of
Speaker 1: their daughters. Imagine that she would get pregnant before marriage
Speaker 1: and thereby dishonored the family or herself. Some people do
Speaker 1: it because of poverty, you know, marrying a daughter of
Speaker 1: means one less mouth to feed, or in the case
Speaker 1: of India, the younger the girl is, the less high
Speaker 1: the dowry that the family of the girl has to
Speaker 1: pay to the family. In the end, it's all related
Speaker 1: to gender inequality. It's all that idea that girls are
Speaker 1: less important than boys. And so I think the reasons
Speaker 1: why this happens are complex, which is why I think
Speaker 1: maybe one of the reasons why people didn't want to
Speaker 1: touch it. And I personally believe the idea that something
Speaker 1: is complex doesn't mean that therefore it isn't important, and
Speaker 1: I feel that this is very important. Then the elders agreed,
Speaker 1: and so we we then said, okay, we're going to
Speaker 1: change this. You've met girls who have escaped from child marriage.
Speaker 1: I wonder you give me more of a sense of
Speaker 1: the face of the problem. Where is it and what's
Speaker 1: the experience of these girls, Like do many of them
Speaker 1: get out? What? Because if you say it's mostly silent
Speaker 1: in these girls are denied a voice, and we don't
Speaker 1: hear the story of child marriage from their perspective for
Speaker 1: the most part. So I've now traveled to many places
Speaker 1: where child marriage happens, and it happens truly all over world,
Speaker 1: across religions, across cultures, across continents, and it's an illusion.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're none of the Holy Book says marry
Speaker 1: her daughters before eighteen, but it is happening across all religions,
Speaker 1: for example, and the highest numbers are in Sub Saharan Africa.
Speaker 1: The country with the highest percentage rate is Nisa, where
Speaker 1: three out of every four girls are married before the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen. The country with the highest absolute number
Speaker 1: is India, which has obviously a huge population, but also
Speaker 1: the rates there are quite high. So South Asia is
Speaker 1: also really a problematic. But then you see child marriage,
Speaker 1: for example, also in Latin America, and that the stories
Speaker 1: of the girls in Latin America are often slightly different than,
Speaker 1: for example, the girls in Bangladesh or the girls in Africa,
Speaker 1: And so it's very important to you know, look contact
Speaker 1: specific why does it happen. For example, in Ethiopia, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of it seems related to basically tradition.
Speaker 1: We always do this, and the many fathers and mothers
Speaker 1: don't even know that they're alternatives and that actually it
Speaker 1: would be They think that this is the right thing
Speaker 1: for their daughters and they don't realize how harmful it is.
Speaker 1: But in Ethiopia, I'll never forget. I met a group
Speaker 1: of married girls and there was this girl I was
Speaker 1: seated next to, and I asked her, how old were
Speaker 1: you when you got married? And she said, I don't
Speaker 1: really know, because I don't know when I was born,
Speaker 1: because many of these girls don't have burst their difficates.
Speaker 1: And she said, but I must have been between the
Speaker 1: age of five and seven when I got married. And
Speaker 1: this really went like a knife through my heart because
Speaker 1: at that time my own daughters were five and six
Speaker 1: years old. And I thought about the lottery of life.
Speaker 1: If my daughters had had been born there in northern Ethiopia,
Speaker 1: they might have been married at that time. And it
Speaker 1: really felt like this is an injustice, that this cannot continue.
Speaker 1: I mean, the geography, the place where you're born, should
Speaker 1: not determine destiny, the chances that you have to live,
Speaker 1: you know, a well educated and happy life. But then
Speaker 1: I think of the girls who I met in Indonesia,
Speaker 1: who some of them ended up in child marriage because
Speaker 1: sex is a taboo and so people don't really want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. And that's not just in Indonesia,
Speaker 1: that is in many places in the world, including in
Speaker 1: the West. And so these girls didn't know how you
Speaker 1: get pregnant. They didn't know that you can have contracept
Speaker 1: us to avoid getting pregnant. And so these girls, thanks
Speaker 1: to the inappropriate advances of boys, and pregnant, and that
Speaker 1: means that they're basically then forced to marry the men
Speaker 1: who made them pregnant, and normally then also leave school.
Speaker 1: So the reasons why it happens are different. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's also so important when you try to solve
Speaker 1: this issue that you look carefully at why is it
Speaker 1: happening in this particular community, what are the reasons, and
Speaker 1: how can we change it. It wasn't so long ago
Speaker 1: that the child marriage was totally normal in Europe, in
Speaker 1: the developed world. I mean, I was just thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: thorn kerker Guard was engaged to a fifteen year old girl,
Speaker 1: Novalace was engaged to a twelve year old girl. These
Speaker 1: were famous moral philosophers in Europe in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: So how do you avoid the problem of seeming ethnocentric
Speaker 1: or condescending. We don't do this anymore. Speaking to the
Speaker 1: developed world, you can't do it anymore. I think it's
Speaker 1: a very good point. I mean, you cannot come in
Speaker 1: as an outsider into a community and tell them this
Speaker 1: is wrong. Stop it. I think if you're ultimately talking
Speaker 1: about what needs to happen is social norm change. You
Speaker 1: need to change what people consider normal, and that can
Speaker 1: only be done in an effective way if you are
Speaker 1: do it in a respectful way, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: done by people who the community trusts. So foreigners walking
Speaker 1: into a community and saying this is wrong is not
Speaker 1: going to work. Let's also not forget I don't think
Speaker 1: that any parent wants to hurt their children. So parents
Speaker 1: want the best for their children. So what we see
Speaker 1: is that when you want to create last change, Yes
Speaker 1: you need laws that set a minimum age of marriage.
Speaker 1: Yes you need alternatives. You know, you need to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're schooling, that there is reproductive health, contraceptives,
Speaker 1: that all that is available. But in the end, if
Speaker 1: you really want to get to the point where parents
Speaker 1: say go from of course my daughter will be married
Speaker 1: at age fourteen. Two. Of course my daughter will not
Speaker 1: be married at the age of fourteen. You need social
Speaker 1: normative change to happen in the community, and what we
Speaker 1: know how best to do that is by actually having
Speaker 1: people who are trusted by the community do that and
Speaker 1: sit down with them and not tell them what you're
Speaker 1: doing is wrong, but start talking about And I've seen
Speaker 1: these programs with my own eyes and it is fascinating.
Speaker 1: They take time, but you know, you sit down with
Speaker 1: everybody in the community every other Friday under the big tree,
Speaker 1: and you talk about how come that we're so poor,
Speaker 1: how come that so many of our young girls die
Speaker 1: in childbirth? How come you know X, y Z. And
Speaker 1: then you help people understand about rights, you help people
Speaker 1: understand about alternatives. And what we see happen then is
Speaker 1: communities that collectively deside by themselves to say, look, we
Speaker 1: thought we were doing the right thing. We're not longer
Speaker 1: gonna marry our daughters at a young age. We know
Speaker 1: it is better for all of us, not just for
Speaker 1: the girls, not to do it, and we will all
Speaker 1: be wealthier and healthier if we do so. And that's
Speaker 1: amazing and that's the power of change. And that's what
Speaker 1: also makes me hopeful that if we can kind of
Speaker 1: skill these programs up and really empower these local change
Speaker 1: makers to make it possible for them to work with
Speaker 1: traditional leaders, with local religious leaders, with the teachers, with
Speaker 1: anybody who holds power in the community, if they can
Speaker 1: all work together, all across roots level, I think we
Speaker 1: can see a change at skill that right now we
Speaker 1: find still hard to imagine. Yeah, it's such an important
Speaker 1: point that norms are more important than laws. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you can go all over the United States
Speaker 1: and find state like Massachusetts where the child marriage is
Speaker 1: legal if the parents agree to it, you know, the
Speaker 1: age of twelve, but it doesn't happen because it's not
Speaker 1: done anymore. But does the law play a role as well?
Speaker 1: The laws to certain extent plays a role. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: India has had a law that for about one hundred
Speaker 1: years that says no marriage under the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: and that was ignored. So laws can play a role
Speaker 1: if they also get if they get implemented. But changing
Speaker 1: of laws and discussing laws can help to create an
Speaker 1: environment in which change is easier. The situation in the
Speaker 1: United States is actually quite disturbing in that the number
Speaker 1: of child brides in the United States seems to be
Speaker 1: around twenty five thousand per year. If you look at
Speaker 1: the global skilled child marriage twelve million per year, twenty
Speaker 1: five thousands isn't a whole lot, but twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: girls in a country like the United States getting married
Speaker 1: every year. I just find that flavor guesting. And what's
Speaker 1: disturbing is that until about a year or so ago,
Speaker 1: you could get married in the United States in every state,
Speaker 1: all of the fifty states, below the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: because either states had no minimum age of marriage, or
Speaker 1: they had a minimum of age of marriage at for example,
Speaker 1: twelve or sixteen, or those states that had eighteen as
Speaker 1: the minimum age of marriage, there were so called exemplary
Speaker 1: clauses where basically, with the permission of your parents or
Speaker 1: the permission of a judge, you could actually marry before
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen. Now that's starting to change. There
Speaker 1: are two states, New Jersey and Delaware that have changed it.
Speaker 1: If I remember the states correctly, and we know that
Speaker 1: they're in Massachusetts and in other states, there's now a
Speaker 1: push to change the laws, which also helps them to
Speaker 1: get a dialogue going. But what I found most disturbing
Speaker 1: is when I learned that these girls take a girl
Speaker 1: sixteen year old in the United States who gets married.
Speaker 1: She's not allowed until she's eighteen to buy a house
Speaker 1: because legally, for everything else, you need to be eighteen
Speaker 1: before you can sign any contracts. She's not allowed to
Speaker 1: vote until she's eighteen years old, because we don't trust her,
Speaker 1: apparently with our vote. But if she ends up in
Speaker 1: an abusive marriage, if her husband actually hits her or
Speaker 1: mentally abuses her and she wants to escape to a
Speaker 1: safe house, she's not allowed to enter a safe house
Speaker 1: on her own because she's a minor. She needs her
Speaker 1: parents permission for that, her husband's permission, and the same
Speaker 1: way she can maybe get married, but she can't file
Speaker 1: for a divorced or she's eighteen. So that's a crazy
Speaker 1: situation and that clearly needs to just to change. I'm
Speaker 1: really heartened that you think child marriage could be eliminated
Speaker 1: by twenty thirty. That's in eleven years. How will we
Speaker 1: see that happen? Will it be particular places that we
Speaker 1: make dramatic progress quickly, or do you think this is
Speaker 1: going to be a simultaneous global phenomenon of consciousness and
Speaker 1: reduction and child marriage. It will have to be a
Speaker 1: magic call mix of all that. So we've looked at, okay,
Speaker 1: how do you end child marriage? And we've worked together
Speaker 1: with one hundred and fifty experts worldwide on looking at
Speaker 1: what are the interventions needed to end child marriage? And
Speaker 1: that work took us a year and a half and
Speaker 1: we developed a theory of change which can be found
Speaker 1: on the Girls Not Brides dot org website, and basically
Speaker 1: we found there are four kinds of interventions that need
Speaker 1: to happen. First, as you need to empower girls. You
Speaker 1: need them to realize that they have rights and that
Speaker 1: child marriage is not necessarily a legal nor a good thing.
Speaker 1: But just empowering girls is not going to do the
Speaker 1: trick on its own, because girls constant up to their
Speaker 1: parents on their own. Secondly, you need to sensitize those
Speaker 1: who make the decision in the community about when the
Speaker 1: girls should get married. The decision makers so that can
Speaker 1: be the parents, can be the local religious or traditional leaders,
Speaker 1: and you need to do that as we were discussing
Speaker 1: in a respectful way. Thirdly, you need to make sure
Speaker 1: that there are alternative services for these girls. So there
Speaker 1: needs to be education because if you keep a girl
Speaker 1: out of marriage but you can't educate her, you're not
Speaker 1: really helping her. Similarly, you know, you need to make
Speaker 1: sure that she gets a reproductive health education and un Fourthly,
Speaker 1: we need to make sure that there are policies and
Speaker 1: laws in place and actually getting implemented. And if you
Speaker 1: do all these things, then we know you can make progress.
Speaker 1: Now that sounds complex, but at the same time, we
Speaker 1: see a lot of momentum in people wanting to do this,
Speaker 1: and again, something being complex doesn't mean that it can't
Speaker 1: be done. So we need to do that country by
Speaker 1: country by country by country, and local non governmental organizations
Speaker 1: are going to play a big role in that because
Speaker 1: they're the ones that can really work in the community
Speaker 1: with the parents and with the families who do this.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, when you have governments putting
Speaker 1: their weight behind this and saying, you know, we the
Speaker 1: government of Mozambique are now making sure that all our
Speaker 1: laws say are consistent and say eighteen is the minimum
Speaker 1: major of marriage, and we're going to have government policy
Speaker 1: on ending child marriage. That helps to create momentum and
Speaker 1: there what we see then, is that governments, once they
Speaker 1: start because this issue is now on the global agenda
Speaker 1: and not longer ignored, governments start competing for wanting to
Speaker 1: be the front runner. So what we need to do
Speaker 1: is on the one end, change on a grassroots level,
Speaker 1: but we also need to see change happening at a
Speaker 1: national level, and then we need that kind of global
Speaker 1: competition and make the issue relevant or keep it relevant
Speaker 1: on a global level. And it's really exciting to see
Speaker 1: that that's happening. And what I think then what happens
Speaker 1: if you get this accelerator because people start seeing positive
Speaker 1: change happening. And what I've learned over my years working
Speaker 1: on creating social change, not just in the field of
Speaker 1: child marriage but also in other areas, is when there's
Speaker 1: positive momentum, people want to be part of it. It
Speaker 1: really it works like a magnet. And so I'm sure
Speaker 1: that with the progress we're seeing, we're only going to
Speaker 1: pull in more people who want to help to create change,
Speaker 1: and we're going to see more villages that say, look,
Speaker 1: we actually want to end child marriage, and so then
Speaker 1: it will start spreading like a wildfire, which is what
Speaker 1: makes me hopeful that we can actually do this in
Speaker 1: what might seem very ambitious in an eleven or twelve
Speaker 1: year timeframe. May, well, it's wonderful that you've taken on
Speaker 1: this problem the way you have. What are some of
Speaker 1: the things listeners can do if they want to get
Speaker 1: involved or help reduce and leading towards the elimination of
Speaker 1: child marriage. Well, what would first of all be wonderful
Speaker 1: is that if listeners could help to raise awareness about
Speaker 1: the issue, because yes, compared to a decade ago, there's
Speaker 1: much more attention to child marriage, but it isn't enough yet. Secondly,
Speaker 1: what listeners can do is those who work in the
Speaker 1: development field, actually, if they work on issues of violence
Speaker 1: against children, if they work on education, if they work
Speaker 1: on maternal health, if they work on family planning, in
Speaker 1: whatever programs they do, it would be good if they
Speaker 1: take into account the impact that this child marriage is
Speaker 1: having on their work. And then people who are not
Speaker 1: in this field, working in this field, but who feel
Speaker 1: passionate about this issue, I would encourage them to become
Speaker 1: part of a new initiative that we've started, which is
Speaker 1: called the Vow to End Child Marriage vow like a vow,
Speaker 1: taking a vow and the idea of VOW is basically
Speaker 1: that everybody in the world can help work together and
Speaker 1: can actually make a contribution to end child marriage. And
Speaker 1: what we're doing is specifically targeting the wedding industry because
Speaker 1: we believe that it should be possible when a couple
Speaker 1: in the rich and West gets married and say I
Speaker 1: do to each other, that they can then help girls
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the world to say I don't. And so
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do is make it possible for
Speaker 1: people who are getting married, or who are renewing their vows,
Speaker 1: or who are celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary to do
Speaker 1: three things. One is they can actually register their wedding
Speaker 1: registry lists with the note and if they align it
Speaker 1: with VOW, then up to three percent of all the
Speaker 1: gifts that money will be given to VOW to support
Speaker 1: grassroots work, to enter out marriage, to work in the communities. Secondly,
Speaker 1: you can buy VOW specific VOWL products, like they are
Speaker 1: specific wedding dresses, and they're going to be other products
Speaker 1: that if you buy them, a percentage or a fixed
Speaker 1: amount will actually go to VOW. And lastly, I mean
Speaker 1: we live in an age where people feel often they
Speaker 1: already have everything and they don't need more more stuff
Speaker 1: in their houses. And so people who feel that way,
Speaker 1: they can maybe make a donation to vow instead of
Speaker 1: asking for gifts. So the idea here is that we're
Speaker 1: going to get companies and people working in the wedding
Speaker 1: industry with k baking cakes or doing the wedding flowers,
Speaker 1: or doing the wedding hair or the wedding makeup, or
Speaker 1: couples and their friends and family that everybody unites in
Speaker 1: order to make sure that girls elsewhere in the world
Speaker 1: can decide whether they want to get married, with whom
Speaker 1: they want to get married, and most importantly, when they
Speaker 1: want to get married. Mabel, thanks for joining us Unsolvable.
Speaker 1: Thank you for talking about this. I hope that by
Speaker 1: working together we can make sure that all girls can
Speaker 1: be girls and all brides. Wow. Well, that conversation certainly
Speaker 1: upended some assumptions that I had about child marriage. I
Speaker 1: didn't know the worldwide issue, and I didn't know how
Speaker 1: big a problem it was twelve million girls. But also,
Speaker 1: as Mabel said, just because an issue is complex and
Speaker 1: big doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and
Speaker 1: ignore it. I love Mabel's suggestion for a couple's planning
Speaker 1: a wedding. To use that opportunity to help VOW, you
Speaker 1: can donate, You can buy VOW products or register your
Speaker 1: wedding with them, and all the proceeds go to Girls
Speaker 1: First Fund, who distribute them to local organizations across Africa, Asia,
Speaker 1: Latin America and the Caribbean. These organizations work tirelessly to
Speaker 1: prevent child marriage. So you're a big day that could
Speaker 1: mean something to girls everywhere. Solvable is a collaboration between
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and the Rockefella Foundation, with production by Laura Hyde,
Speaker 1: Hester Kant, Laura Sheeter, and Ruth Barnes from Chalk and Blade.
Speaker 1: Pushkin's executive producer is Neia LaBelle, Research by Sheer, Vincent,
Speaker 1: engineering by Jason Gambrell and the Great Folks at GSI Studios.
Speaker 1: Original music composed by Pascal Wise and special thanks to
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Heather Fine, Julia Barton, Carli Mgliori, Jacob Weisberg
Speaker 1: and Malcolm Gladwell. You can learn more about solving Today's
Speaker 1: biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org, slash Solvable. I'm
Speaker 1: Mave Higgins. Now go solve it.