EEUU: First Lady Trip to Africa to Highlight Educational Obstacles Girls Face

América del Norte/EEUU/Junio 2016/Autor: Editor / Fuente: voanews.com

Resumen:  La primera dama de EEU, Michelle Obama, tiene previsto viajar el domingo a África para abogar por la educación de las niñas.

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is scheduled to travel on Sunday to Africa to advocate for girl’s education.

Obama will highlight one of her core initiatives, Let Girls Learn. Sasha and Malia, President Obama and first lady’s daughters, and the girls’ grandmother, Marian Robinson, will also be joining the trip with stops in Liberia, Morocco and Spain.

“We believe very strongly that education and the empowerment of young people is going to be critical to a region that has known so much turmoil, particularly given the enormous youth population in those countries,” White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said on Friday.

The first stop is Liberia, where the first lady will attend a meeting with the first elected woman head of state in Africa, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Obama then will visit the Peace Corps training facility in Kakata, Liberia, to speak with women participating at the Girls Leading Our World Program. They will also meet with Peace Corps volunteers and trainees.

The first lady will speak to adolescent girls at Unification Town, also in Liberia, about the obstacles they faced in order to acquire education. Actor Freida Pinto will join Obama and is schedule to moderate the meeting.
“The conversation will highlight both educational barriers girls face as Liberia moves beyond the Ebola epidemic, and the U.S. government’s efforts to continue to address those barriers and provide adolescent girls with equitable access to safe and quality education,” said Tina Tchen, Chief of Staff to the first lady.

Let Girls Learn is a global initiative launched by the president and first lady in 2015. The program addresses the obstacles that keep more than 62 million girls around the world out of school such as forced marriage, poverty, and violence.

White House staff said on Friday that 250 million girls live in poverty, and one out of three girls in developing countries are married by the age of 18. One in nine by 15.

In Morocco, Obama and daughters will be joined by actor Meryl Streep on June 28 and 29 for another conversation to help girls go to school. The country has about 85 percent of girls enrolled in school, but the number drops to 14 percent for high school.

The six-day trip ends in Spain, White house staff said.

Spain is a longtime U.S. ally and has dealt with “significant” economic challenges in recent years.

“The first lady, by going to these three countries, is able to visit three important regions to the United States, and is able to speak not just to government [officials] but to speak to people and to make clear that …a key part of our leadership is what we can do to lift up the lives of young people, particularly girls,” Rhodes said.

The White House said CNN films is covering trip costs for both actors. During the visit, CNN will be filming a documentary in Liberia and Morocco.

Michelle Obama will be using social media to document the trip. She recently joined Snapchat. She is also on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Obama will be writing about the travels in a daily diary at HelloGiggles.com.

Fuente de la noticia: http://www.voanews.com/content/first-lady-trip-to-africa-to-highlight-educational-obstacles-girls-face/3391976.html

Fuente de la imagen: http://gdb.voanews.com/53C66F1F-C0E1-4FFD-8832-D0E5C52402E0_mw1024_s_n.jpg