Local Teen Raises Funds to Educate Girls in Pakistan

[Editor's Note: This information was submitted to Patch by Yavneh Day School.]

13 year old Mira Bader, a resident of Los Altos Hills and student at Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos, understands that the education of girls is a paramount piece to the puzzle of lifting communities in developing countries out of poverty.  

“Educated girls earn incomes, participate in the political process, marry later, have children on their own terms and live longer” explained Bader to a packed Mediterranean Ballroom at the Crown Plaza Cabana Hotel in Palo Alto last month.  “That is why I advocated to my classmates that we make a significant contribution to DIL from our class philanthropy fund.”

True she was preaching to the choir, as it were.  Including Bader’s class contribution of $550, DIL raised over $135,000 last year to help build schools, train teachers, purchase educational materials and offer secondary school scholarships to over 1,000 students in Pakistan, most of them girls.  

As highlighted recently by Pakistani teenager and girls’ education activist Malala  Yousafzai, the Taliban is intent on preventing girls from going to school and organizations like DIL are crucial in combatting that influence.  Comments Bader, “My class, which happens to be all girls, focused for a year and a half on issues particularly affecting girls and women such as domestic violence, lack of access to education, forced early marriage, and much more.  We were all moved by the plight of those millions of girls and women and gained new appreciation for our own positions as students and young women in the US. “

Bader’s choice of an organization that empowers mostly Muslim girls in a country that does not always see eye to eye with the United States also reflects the philosophy of the Social Justice class taught at Yavneh by Ms Susan Ellenberg.  Notes Ellenberg,   “I teach the values of our Jewish tradition that command us to care for the vulnerable, not just in our own communities, but throughout the world.  Our obligations extend to every person in need, regardless of ethnicity, religion or country of origin.”

For more information on Yavneh Day School’s Social Justice curriculum, go to www.yavnehdayschool.org or contact Susan Ellenberg at susan@yavnehdayschool.org.  

For more information on DIL, go to www.dil.org or contact SF Chapter President, Ambreen Jamal atambreenjamal73@yahoo.com.