The White Ribbon Alliance Dreams for My Daughter 
Exhibition by Joanna Vestey at WOW – Women of the World at Southbank Centre, London 8-11 March 2012
A BLOG POST BY JENNY ROSE, Press Officer at The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood
FILM: http://youtu.be/dC-6nNxGLRY
Mothers and fathers the world over have dreams for their daughters; for love and happiness, for fulfilment and equality, for peace and prosperity….
But in all too many countries their daughters still have little option but to follow an age old pattern: forced into early marriage and risking death to give birth.
In Afghanistan, 1 in 11 women die in childbirth, and in many countries it is more likely that girls will die giving birth than go to school. This reinforces the vicious circle of low education, poverty, child marriage – and back to early death in childbirth.
Launched for the 100th International Women’s Day, 8 March 2011, Dreams for My Daughter is a unique collection of photographs and writings inspired by Hadhya Yahya Mohammed Al-Zawm, a young woman from Yemen where White Ribbon Alliance is campaigning for a legal minimum age for marriage. In a speech she gave at an event hosted by The White Ribbon Alliance’s Global Patron Sarah Brown, adhya said her mother had a dream for her – not to be married at nine as she had been, and to get an education.
Since then The White Ribbon Alliance has been gathering Dreams from supporters around the world and sharing them in many countries, helping to press political leaders to keep their recent promises to end the needless deaths of women and newborns in childbirth.
The first ever exhibition of Dreams for My Daughter by leading photographer Joanna is launched at WOW – Women of the World festival at Southbank Centre on International Women’s Day, 8th March and runs until Sunday 11th March 2012.
Baroness Goudie's Dream for International Womens' Day: My dream for girls everywhere across the globe is that they can dream big, get a good education, have every opportunity to be the best they can be, and use their talents to make a difference in the future directions of their communities and countries. I also dream that none of them will have to confront any type of violence and that they can always make decisions about all parts of their lives and futures.