Danai Gurira joins the fight to give girls an education

Danai Gurira fights as hard off screen as she does on screen. This time she and other celebs are teaming up to fight the education of girls around the world.

Celebrities from all across the entertainment spectrum have banded together to support a campaign by the advocacy group One. Danai Gurira, along with Natalie Portman, Lady Gaga, Charlize Theron, Ashley Judd, and many others have signed One’s petition calling for the education of more than 130 million girls around the world.

According to UNESCO research nearly two-thirds of the more than 770 million illiterate people in the world are girls. In countries around the globe girls are less likely to be allowed to go to school. They also are forced to drop out of school more often than boys.  Usually they drop out to help at home or to participate in arranged marriages.

Danai Gurira is a passionate advocate for the education of girls. She has worked with the One campaign before. She also works with Bring Back Our Girls. It’s a not a surprise really that one of the fiercest fighters on The Walking Dead would fight just as hard off screen for causes that are important to her.

Many fans of The Walking Dead may not know that Danai wrote a Tony award wining play. The play, Eclipsed, is about the lives of African women affected by war violence.

After each performance of the play the cast and audience stop for a moment. Then they recite the names of some of the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram. In 2016 Eclipsed won the Tony award for Best Play.

The One Campaign Petition

Danai and the other celebrities have endorsed this open letter from the One campaign. The general public is also welcome to sign the petition and add their voices to the celebrities who are calling for better access to education for girls.

The letter states:

“You couldn’t be where you are today without a good education.

But because poverty is sexist, 130 million girls across the world are denied this basic right. Indeed, if the number of girls out of school formed a country, it would be the tenth largest on the planet – bigger than Japan or Germany.

All children deserve a good education, but in the poorest countries girls are denied it more often than boys. Education is vital for moving out of poverty. Every additional year of school that a girl completes increases her future earnings, which is good for her family, her community and her country.

We cannot afford to squander the potential of 130 million girls to cure diseases or end wars, invent brilliant technology or revolutionise an industry… or simply to access opportunity.

We are coming together and uniting across our divides to get every girl into school and to make sure she gets a quality education once she’s there.

But we need you to do the same.

Your education helped you to get where you are today – and it is in your power to help millions of girls to get theirs. Please act now, with the right policies and the necessary funds.

Show us that politics can work for the people – starting with the people who need it most.” – One

International Women’s Day

The letter will be available to sign for several more weeks. It will be presented to a group of international leaders on International Women’s Day. This year that falls on March 8th, 2017.

If you want to join The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira and more than 90 celebrities, artists, and world figures you can add your name to the petition today and help call attention to the lack of education of girls around the world.