COVID IS NO BARRIER FOR AUSSIES WANTING TO DO IT IN A DRESS!
One Girl’s Do It In A Dress campaign has launched for the ninth year! One week into the campaign, we’ve had a whopping 939 people sign up with the aim of raising $200,000 to educate girls in two of the most challenging places in the world to be born a girl; Sierra Leone and Uganda.
More than 130 million girls around the world aren’t in school, simply because they were born a girl, so this year we’re asking Aussies to make sure Covid-19 doesn’t become yet another barrier preventing girls from getting an education and put on a school dress to raise money for those who can’t!
Whether it’s an everyday activity or something crazy, whatever you do, Do It In A Dress and complete your challenge in the lead up to 11th of October, International Day of the Girl.
Australians have surfed, hiked, cycled, snowboarded, pulled stunts and even gone to work in a dress, raising more than $4.5 million since 2011. These funds have helped One Girl provide access to quality education for girls; support female role models; provide health and menstrual hygiene training, teach girls about their sexual rights, safe relationships and respect for girls; and champion gender equality by raising the voices of women and girls across the world!
This year, necessity continues to be the mother of invention as lockdown laws for Victorians in particular force people to be even more creative with their challenges; dog-walking in a dress; hosting cooking shows in a dress and even walking the distance from Sierra Leone to Uganda (right from your home suburb) in a dress!
Raising money for girls’ education lifts families and communities out of poverty, helps fight climate change and creates a real difference in the world.
Every dollar raised can have an incredible impact on a girl’s life. $300, for example, is enough to send a girl to school for an entire year and provide her with everything she needs from books, a school bag, shoes, uniforms, and even a light by which to do her homework.
Right now, only 16% of girls born in Sierra Leone are likely to complete high school and a girl is more likely to be married before she turns 18 than she is to finish high school.
There’s no denying that when a girl has the opportunity to have an education she can change her world. An educated girl will marry later, have smaller and healthier families, help prepare her family for climatic disasters and, for every year a girl stays in school, she’ll increase her income by at least 10%, investing 90% of it back into her family.
Funds raised from Do It In A Dress have changed thousands of lives, with One Girl supporting 501 girls with scholarships.
