School Uniforms Instead of Wedding Dresses for Girls in Nepal: Presentation on How Education Affects Child Marriage

Last Friday, November 21st, we had the opportunity to present at the Global Education Conference. The Global Education Conference is an online worldwide collaborative community involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels. It seeks to connect practitioners and organizations all over the world, while supporting cultural awareness, recognition of diversity and educational access for all.

The presentation, named “School uniform vs. Wedding dress”, talked about how education can prevent child marriage in Nepal. Both from Kathmandu -our Nepal team representative, Prakriti Nepal- and Pittsburgh – our most recent Board Member Priti Bhattarai and our President Bibhuti Aryal- they explained the current situation of Nepal in terms of education and gender inequality. At the present time, according to the Gender Gap Index, Nepal is ranked 112th out of 142 countries. In sharp contrast to the U.S. placed 20th! Similarly, World Education Attainment states that Nepal has only 47% female literacy, compared to 99% in the US.

By describing the achievements of Rukmini Foundation and discussing with the audience the present and future challenges the organization faces, a strong emphasis was placed on promoting global awareness and inspiring action towards solving real–world problems. Through this presentation, the audience was encouraged to become more active citizens of the world. Participants joined from
several parts of the U.S, Ireland and Nepal, and were encouraged to learn, question and engage in meaningful conversation among themselves and with our presenters.

If you did not have a chance to join us, you can download a brief two-page summary on the key points of our presentation here.

If you would like to watch the entire presentation in its entirety, you can watch the recording of the session here.

We would like to thank the Global Education Conference for the chance to create opportunities and connect people within a global context; to all of those who attended and showed great support; and to the presenters for such an informative and inspiring presentation (despite the technical issues!)

Sofia Trivelli