Nature Solutionaries Veronika Perkova

Even though child marriage might seem like a thing of the past for some of us, one in five girls globally are still married off under the age of 18.

This means that for millions of these child brides, their childhood, education and future have been stolen forever. Uneducated women often end up having worse health and economic outcomes and their families are more vulnerable to climate change.

To free girls from this nightmarish practice, Ugandan activist Joan Kembabazi has been challenging traditional beliefs in her community and advocating for girls‘ education and empowerment.

In this interview, Joan talks about why child marriage happens, what it‘s like to be a child bride and what needs to be done to eliminate this practice.

Joan Kembabazi is the Founder & CEO of the Gufasha Girls Foundation. She campaigns against child marriage and advocates for girls‘ education in rural communities in central Uganda and beyond.

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If we truly want to liberate women, access to contraception is just the tip of the iceberg. We also need to feel comfortable talking about our bodies, our sexuality and sensuality, menstruation, post-partum depression, parental burnout and menopause. Because if we feel ashamed or embarrassed about these topics, we’re still being repressed.

That’s just one of many life lessons that Nadine Goodman has learned over the last 40 years running CASA, an impactful nonprofit that helps 80,000 people in central Mexico push reproductive health and rights forward every year. In this revealing interview, we talk about what needs to happen for women to be truly liberated and why it’s a good idea to take a holistic view of the health and well-being of women, whole communities, and the environment.

To have a large family, and at least one son, are such strong cultural and religious norms in Nigeria that when women don’t meet them they’re often considered failures. Not only is this unfair to women, it’s also becoming nearly impossible to provide for a big family in Nigeria, where poverty is rampant and the cost of living has recently tripled. 

Chidera Benoit, a teacher and Executive Director of ⁠Population Explosion Awareness Initiative⁠, explains why it’s essential to change harmful patriarchal norms, broaden access to voluntary family planning and open up a conversation about sustainable population in Nigeria whose population is expected to double in the next two decades. 

Imagine that you were a 14-year old girl, and instead of chatting with friends or monitoring Instagram, you’d be married off to an elderly man and expected to run a household.

Imagine that you gave birth to your first child, a cute baby girl, and instead of receiving cheerful reactions, people would start crying and feeling sorry for you. 

Imagine that throughout your lifetime you would have to give birth to 9 children, undergo several miscarriages and see a few of your children die. 

THIS is not just a bad dream. It’s a daily reality for many girls and women in the northwestern region of Pakistan where men rule with an iron fist and where women aren’t even aware of their rights. In this revealing interview, two human rights activists from The Awakening, Erfaan Hussein Babak and Neelum Rahim, share their experiences of breaking taboos and empowering women in a strictly patriarchal society.

800,000 native trees. This is how many seeds of hope conservationists from Brazilian nonprofit REGUA have planted on degraded lands in the Atlantic Forest over the last two decades  – one of the biologically richest forests in the world. And that’s not all!

The dedicated team managed to buy land that once used to be a farm and patch up fragmented pieces of forests to create an 11,000 hectare nature reserve. In this interview, Micaela Locke, the Research and Communications Coordinator at REGUA, talks about land restoration, native tree reforestation, building
corridors for wildlife, reintroducing tapirs, and safeguarding a vital watershed for 2.5 million people in Rio de Janeiro.

Being able to make decisions about when or whether to have children is among the most fundamental human rights. 

Yet when it comes to women and their bodies, suddenly so many people – complete strangers – feel they have the right to tell women what to do, like, “Contraceptive use is against our religion! “Abortion is a sin!” And so on.

And even though having bodily autonomy makes women healthier, happier, and wealthier, we’re still living in a world where we deny 44% of women autonomy over their options related to having sex, using contraceptives and seeking reproductive healthcare. 

An alarming number for sure!

In this interview with Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins, the CEO and President of PAI, we speak about the whole-societal benefits of providing women reproductive rights, the impacts of repressive reproductive policies and the impetus to join the sisterhood fight.