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Meet Annaya

The school year is more than halfway through! We’d like to introduce a student whose life is being transformed by your compassion and kindness.
As a young girl, Annaya’s heart was broken. She had a passion for learning, but her parents said that education is not for girls. Despite her opposition and resistance, Annaya was married by her parents at the age of 15.

Ten years later, now 25 years old, Annaya has four children and struggles with health problems due to teenage pregnancies.

Annaya’s husband Shreyas has a job, but he abused liquor which left insufficient funds to care for the children. Concerned, Annaya took a job as a maid but still did not have enough to provide for the family.

One evening, walking home from work, Anna encountered one of our teachers named Zara who invited her to the class meeting in Annaya’s village for 2 hours each week night. Annaya was excited for the opportunity to learn! She pleaded with Shreyas to let her attend, and she was able to join the class.

Each da…
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Recent posts

Hope for India's Girls

Photograph of girl taken in a class
Hope for India's Girls
Bringing Them Life
UNICEF recently released wonderful news for the young children of our world!  Since 1990, deaths in children under 5 years old have been cut in half.[1]

Indian girls, however, have little to celebrate.  

India is the only country in the world where baby girls consistently die at a higher rate than boys.[2]  This was true in 1990, and UNICEF numbers reveal that it is equally true in 2015.

The picture comes into starker perspective when you consider that there are many more baby boys born in India than baby girls.  Unborn Indian girls are aborted at an alarmingly high rate.

These numbers reveal a heartbreaking reality: If a girl in India manages to be born at all, she stands a much higher chance of dying before she reaches the age of 6. 

Why?  The Indian newspapers chalk it up to gross neglect, and this must be true, but there is also evidence from a number of sources that young girls are killed by thei…
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How to create a fundraising page on Sister India

We're so excited to introduce our Create-A-Page fundraising opportunity! This post will give you step by step instructions on how to create your own page on SisterIndia.org. Let's get started!

1. Set Up Your Account
Enter your information to create an account. Click “That was quick!” to submit.


2. Create Custom URL
Replace “yournamehere” with a unique name for friends to find your fundraising page. Then click “Create my URL now”. Click “OK” to reload page with your information.















3. Verify Your Account
You should have received an email with a link to verify your account. IMPORTANT: Your page will not be live to the public until you complete this step.

4. Congratulations, you've created your page!From here, you can customize and personalize your pageby completing the checklist on the right, or click “View My Page” on the upper left.  Customizing is OPTIONAL. If you wish to skip customizing, click "View My Page" on the upper left and scroll down to Step 8.




5. View My Pag…
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Men speaking out for women this Father's Day

Why is it important for men to speak up for women in the face of abuse, inequality, and devaluing? To answer that question, I’d like to first address another issue: why do men seek to control, abuse, and dominate women?

In his book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, author Robert Moore addresses some of the psychological and anthropological reasons behind male dominance over women. His analysis? Men have not been initiated, ritualized, nor taught how to be responsible, blessed, and gentle people. We have males in adult bodies but with a “boy psychology” (borrowing Moore’s phrase) filled with immaturity, irresponsibility, and sometimes untamed sexual energies seeking to oppress. Much of the work that men must do is to undergo the process of claiming their masculinity in adulthood and becoming responsible human beings that bless women and men alike.

I grew up seeing women abused in my family of origin. It stretched out to four generati…
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My first Father’s Day

This will be my first Father’s Day as a father. My wife and I are expecting our firstborn, a sweet baby girl, in about a month.

As I understand it, Father’s Day is a good day to be a dad. You get all the red meat you could want, you can watch a Lee Marvin flick with impunity, and you get the love and admiration of your family in the form of cards with glued-on elbow macaroni.

Having grown up with a scrappy younger brother, I have only a vague and hypothetical understanding of what girls are like. My childhood may not have clued me in to the particular care and feeding that my little girl will need as she grows into the woman she’s destined to be. But I do know that little girls are a treasure, and it breaks my heart to know that globally, girls face abuse, neglect and exploitation daily.

Fathers are an integral part of our families and an essential part of this world. Your presence, attention and kindness at home lead to the stability that helps your family thrive out in the world. And…
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Let girls be girls!

I don’t know her yet, but I love her.

After 10 months of peeing on sticks to no avail, in November I saw the tiny double line I’d been longing for. I soon learned Baby likes pancakes and Dad shows his love by coming home with 8 kinds of crackers to keep the nausea at bay. And in the grab bag of first trimester surprises, something unexpected happened.

Baby was still the size of an olive and we had months to go before learning our little creature’s gender. I was watching a documentary I’d already seen twice--- about the dangers girls face all over the world. And three quarters of the way through, I lost it. I ugly-cried in a way I’ve never done so abruptly. 
All it took was one thought: “It’s a terrifying thing to bring a girl into this world.”
Terrifying to love a treasure so full of promise in a world that’s primed to break her spirit and beat her body.
As the 8 inch baby girl inside me grows, I can’t wait to meet her, to celebrate her. And more than ever, I’m passionate about crea…
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Give the Gift of Light

Light her path this Giving Tuesday. Hundreds of millions of our sisters in India are living in deep darkness...
IN INDIA... 45 million children are working today.  47% of girls are married before 18.  Every 17 minutes a bride is burned to death over dowry. She’s traded like property.  Every 20 minutes a woman or girl is raped. Most go unprosecuted.  50 million girls are missing in India. That’s as if every single girl in America disappeared.  86% of India’s women live on less than $2.50 a day.  250 million of them are robbed of education… It’s not too late to give it to them.
You hold the flame to her freedom. Through Sister India, you can give her a comprehensive education for a one-time gift of just $30.
80% of a students reach a fifth grade reading level within the year. Income-earning potential doubles. Before the class, 41% of students advocate child marriage; after, only 5% do. The 51% who advocated child labor at the beginning of the class has shrunk to 6%. Girls who once wer…
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