Stolen Freedom, Violated Future, Cultural Arrest

I am in shock at the abysmal reality to which I have been recently exposed to... Shocking, to say the least. I can very briefly summarise the facts for you just to get you to better feel and understand how perplex the situation has made me. But let me warn you though that some people view it with cultural eyes. Therefore, they don't really understand that what I am about to tell you is nothing more than proof of the extreme need for educating people against a stolen freedom and a violated future.

Women do indeed empower their profiles when armed with qualifications; it's the only way men and women in this world can once for all individually evade a life marked by opression that due to traditionalist cultural arrest endanger the dream of a fairer world.

So let's go straight to the point 

I have been for many years now, monthly supporting two children as part of a project where I contribute £25 (each child) for their food, health and education. Well, in our western reality that doesn't seem much, but considering that this is something I am capable of providing with a lot of personal effort, and also considering that these children are based in Mozambique and Guatemala, it glows differently.

But I have been doing it with love, kindness and a deep belief that one day I can actually change the lives of these children. If they become properly educated they will be able to exit a cycle marked by limited options, poverty, social imbalance, broken dreams. The investment we put into one child will generate positive changes in all lives to him/her related.

Very well, I was eager to maintain the status quo of that financial support and I even had the dream of, later in their lives, becoming alongside my wife, a sponsor for their further higher education. I was really considering helping these two lives blossom into fully accomplished existences. That was deeply hurt, wounded and scarred when I got a phone call from one of the NGO members informing me that one of the girls I have been supporting had just married at the age of 14!

They were really nice in informing me promptly. All the details were there, they even mentioned that this is typical of rural areas and offered me the opportunity to replace this child (who was now to exit the program) by another one in desperate need for help. I obviously accepted. But I can't get rid of this sense of void, a certain sense of betrayal that destiny decided to inflict me with. How can a child who is barely 14 years old be given to someone, so to become the wife of him?, the wife of a male either as immature as herself or much older (and if that is the case, oh my, oh my...?)!!!?

I now remember the letters exchanged with this child through the charity's program, and her words 'tainted' with hopes and dreams of becoming a teacher later in life... that she loved school so much...

I can't help but wonder how much would that still be true for her life. It's even worse when one reads in the "The Guardian", a week ago or so, what a desperate life most of these young women are going through in their lives. Yes, this 'child' is from Guatemala.

Guatemalan children's shelter fire: death toll rises to 40 as demonstrations erupt