'Girl Rising' portrays power of educating girls
"Girl Rising," a documentary and book on the amazing things that can happen in society when girls are educated, will be shared in Naperville at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, at the Hollywood Palms Cinema, 352 S. Route 59.
Worldwide findings indicate societies can be transformed in merely one generation when girls benefit from education. Barriers begin to drop: early marriage, gender-based violence, domestic slavery and sex trafficking among them.
"Girl Rising," a grass-roots empowerment project from India, released a 2013 documentary focused on these and similar issues. Today, the campaign has reached the Republic of Congo and Nigeria with its message of the power, passion and intelligence of girls and young women. And supporters the world over are jumping on the bandwagon.
Speakers at the Naperville event include the film's senior producer, Kayce Freed Jennings, and Sokha Chen, one of the nine girls featured in the documentary (currently a student in Chicago).
The presentation and reading will be followed by a Q&A session and then a showing of the film. Tickets are required and available exclusively at Anderson's Bookshop, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., Naperville; (630) 355-2665; or at the cinema door. Online purchases may be made at www.andersonsbookshop.com.
A portion of the proceeds will benefit A New Day Cambodia, a nonprofit group that offers shelter, food and education for hundreds of young children who previously eked out a living in the horrific Phnom Penh garbage dump.
Jennings, the film's senior producer, is co-founder of The Documentary Group, an independent production company.
Before helping to launch The Documentary Group, Jennings was a producer at ABC News, based in London, Atlanta and New York. She covered international and national news events for virtually every news division broadcast and was on the staffs of Nightline, World News Tonight and 20/20.
Jennings serves as vice chairman on the board of directors of Win, an agency that serves homeless families; sits on the advisory boards of School of Leadership Afghanistan and The Bridgehampton Child Care Center; and was co-editor of Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life, an oral biography of her late husband.
Sokha Chen, who grew up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is one of nine girls featured in "Girl Rising," the film at the center of a global campaign for girls' education.
Orphaned young, Chen spent much of her childhood scavenging for survival in the steaming, squalid and dangerous Stung Meanchey garbage dump, searching for scraps to salvage and sell. In 2008, she was rescued by a nonprofit called A New Day Cambodia, founded by Chicago photographer Bill Smith to help house, feed, clothe, and educate children from the dump.
Chen took full advantage of the opportunity, becoming a diligent student and earning a scholarship to one of Phnom Penh's top private schools.
Chen is now in her first year at Kendall College in Chicago, where she studies hospitality. She wouldn't tell you (but Bill Smith will!) that she got all As in her first semester, and she also received the deans scholarship at Kendall College.