While the world focuses on the rage and protests and murders in the Arab world, I know a hundred peaceful revolutionaries right here in Bangladesh who are worth much more of your time. They won't make the nightly news, they are quiet and humble, but in their own way they are shaping the future. Poor rural girls in Bangladesh - Muslim and Hindu alike - face incredible obstacles. But every time I visit their homes, I see courage and grace that puts many of the world's revolutionaries to shame.
By fighting the odds to stay in school and forego early marriage, by believing that even a dirt-poor girl in a shanty-town village can rise above overwhelming poverty and make something good of her life for herself and her family, these Bangladeshi girls are on the path to change the world. It will take a long time, it will be very difficult, and there are massive forces arrayed against them. But change can happen through these girls and with the support of their families.
They are the peaceful revolutionaries. They are the ones who will change the world.

I visited some predominantly Hindu Dalit villages again yesterday, and was once again struck by the grace of the young women who face such challenges. Villages that are are permanently half-submerged under flood waters; a male-dominated culture where most girls drop out of school and are married as teens; an epidemic of violence and spousal abuse; and the simple reality of backbreaking poverty. As I've said many times before, the burdens of poverty fall heaviest on girls, and in a hundred ways they bear the brunt of misery in rural poverty.
I know that smiles can be deceiving, and that none of my young friends are perfect angels. I'm sure that they skip class and yell at their mom and a hundred other things like any other kid, and that they probably put on their best face for a foreign visitor to their village. But some things cannot be faked. I have seen their villages, and I have talked to their leaders and families, and I know their dire situation. In rain-soaked villages, in huts with no electricity, with mildewing textbooks and walks through the mud to overcrowded and under-resourced schools, these girls endure. It's more than I could handle, that's for sure.
Our Girls Education Program is quite simple. With Speak Up donors sponsoring an individual girl, we team with a local NGO to empower a young girl's education: books, supplies, tutors, uniforms, a training program, and regular meetings with her teachers and family to ensure that she is on track. Starting here in Bangladesh, where most of the Dalit girls drop out of school quite young, we hope to one day empower thousands of girls to stay in school and rise out of poverty with dignity. It's a small part of partnering with the poor to change lives.
21 girls are now being sponsored in rural Bangladesh, a number we plan to significantly expand starting in 2013. We hope one day to take the GEP to a number of other places where girls in poverty face the toughest obstacles to success: to Yemen, where many poor rural girls are denied an education and equal rights; to girls at risk of trafficking into brothels in Nepal and Cambodia and Vietnam; to vulnerable minority girls in Burma who are denied citizenship by their own government; and many, many more.
Educating girls in poverty - part of the Speak Up vision of changing the world. It's our way, in a world of such violence and conflict, to empower peaceful revolutionaries who will change things forever.
If you would like more information about partnering with us in these efforts, please contact Speak Up at: sponsor@speakupforthepoor.org