Branches Book

BRANCHES

likelihood of survival once born, a mother who is educated is twice as likely to be able to send her own children to school as a woman who is uneducated ( Educating Girls in Africa ). For me, this is the most hopeful and optimistic statistic or all, because it means that one day worldwide education could actually become a reality. It is one thing to fight for this generation of girls to get an education, but knowing that doing so could also help the next generation get an education makes the effect of sending a girl to school not just a lifelong benefit for her and her children, but also for generations to come. The more girls we can send to school and keep in school today, the more children in the future will have an education in their lives. We can make worldwide education a reality, and it starts with getting girls in school today. It is kind of like the saying, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime.” Except in this case, not only do you feed that man and his children for a lifetime, but he also teaches his children to fish and they can feed their families for a lifetime, and so on. Making such a huge and lasting impact by doing as little as supporting one girl through school is unfathomable to me, and makes this cause that much more important. Now I can guess what some of you may be thinking. “This is a great cause! Gosh we should do something about that! But… there are so many issues facing the world, all worthy causes. What makes this one more worthy?” I would first like to say that I am in no way belittling the problems facing the world. There are families who are starving, have no access to water, are living in war torn countries, and are facing countless other atrocities. In a world torn apart by suffering, it can often feel trying to figure out how to make the biggest difference. There are so many problems that need attention now or the consequences can be as dire as death. It is extremely hard to move past these problems and look at long term solutions when there is so much that needs immediate attention. I am not saying that choosing to give to organizations that cater to these immediate concerns is in anyway lesser than giving to something long term such as education. It is your choice, and doing good with whatever excess you can donate in your life is more than enough. That being said, I would like to introduce a tool called Utilitarianism that can perhaps show that focusing on long term solutions such as women’s education simply isn’t always different than focusing on short term solutions for problems that need attention right now. Utilitarianism is an ethical system that focuses on the outcome of a person’s actions. The goal is to create the best possible result from their actions, which in this case can mean creating the biggest positive impact on the world. Utilitarianism uses a metric of pleasure and pain, where pleasure roughly equates to happiness, and pain is equivalent to suffering, in all of its

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