October 10, 2025 • 16 mins
Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau talks to Chelsea about why child marriage is still such a prevalent issue in the world - even in the US - and what we can do about it.
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You can help! Visit Vow for Girls or Unchained at Last to get involved.
Recommended Reading Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
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Executive Producer Catherine Law
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi there, thanks for being with us today. We're sitting
here with Princess Mabel von Naranya. Did I say your
name correctly?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Pretty well?
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Oh okay, well yeah, I'm an American, so you know
you got to cut me some slack. We're under a
lot of pressure these days. Thank you so much for
being with us today.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Very nice to be with you, Chelsea, really really lovely.
Oh wonderful.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay, So this is great. This is going to be
a nice educational episode for our listeners since many people
aren't aware. There's actually a child marriage crisis all around
the world, including here in the United States. So our
guest today is here to talk about that. For International
Day of the Girl, which is tomorrow, we wanted to
shed some light on this issue, and we have somebody
(00:43):
who knows a lot about it, so let's discuss it.
Says that nearly twelve million girls become brides each year,
which means that every three seconds a girl is forced
into marriage. I would presume that most Americans would never
think that that's happening in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Not just that Americans wouldn't think about it. I think
most people all over the world were ignoring this, and
I mean think about it. The girl. Every three seconds,
that's a girl and another girl, and it goes on
and on and on, and this is incredibly damaging. So
it's a huge problem. But this imagine that you are,
let's say, a fourteen year old girl, whether you're growing
(01:21):
up in the US or whether you're growing up in
Latin America in Africa. One day you come out of
school and basically your parents have decided that you're no
longer going back to school, and they're going to marry
you off to a man that you haven't chosen, who's
often a bit older than you are, and you're basically
shipped off to go live with his family. And these
girls then often end up being you know, abused, either
(01:45):
by their in laws or by their husbands. And also
these are girls that often for them, their their wedding
night is not a happy event. Their wedding night might
be the night when they get pregnant while they are
physically children themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Talk a little bit about some of the health risks
to younger girls who do get pregnant and like what
that can do to their bodies or why their bodies
are not prepared for that.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, I mean, we all remember when we were, you know, teenagers,
we might already get our period and things, but we're
physically still still children in a way. And so what
you see is that teenagers, girls who get pregnant are
much more likely to either have complications when they're pregnant
or in childbirths. They're more likely to die in childbirths.
But also what we see happening is that their babies
(02:34):
are much less likely to survive the first year of life.
And many of these child brides live in places where
you don't have good health services, so if they get complications,
they can't go to a hospital or to a clinic
to get supported. Can I just ask you how you
got it?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I know you've worked with Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela,
and how did you get involved in this work?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So I was very lucky, like you say, Chelsea, to
work with a group called the Elders, which Nelson Mandela
had created, and it's a group of former heads of government,
of former UN secretary generals, really eminent individuals, including President
Jimmy Carter was a member of this group, and they
wanted to work on gender inequality. They were saying that
the fact that men and women are not equals is
(03:17):
one of the biggest injustices of our times. And not
only that, is also kind of stupid because if we
want to get out of poverty, women have to play
their role. It's often women who lived their families out
of poverty. And so they then started looking at like
what's happening, And we then came across the issue of
child marriage, and the issue of child marriage was it's
(03:39):
on the one end, you know, the two words child marriage,
say it all and everybody realizes this is not okay.
But at the same time, the world was basically not
paying attention. And I think that to a large extent
and is because these girls, they're minors. They don't often
have passports, many of these girls don't speak English. A
lot of them in places like Africa Asia don't even
(04:00):
have access to mobile phones, and so these girls can't
really self organize. They do not realize that what is
happening here is actually not normal and that it should stop,
and that it's not good for them. If it stops,
it's also good for their families.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And to be clear, this is a very male problem.
It's not like women are looking at young girls and saying,
let's marry these girls off.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Right, like only men have to be told by the
government not to marry actual children.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Right. It's often the father's or the community as a
whole that drives this. And it's sometimes done because of poverty.
You know, if you are really poor in your marry
your daughter of you have one less mouth to feet.
It's sometimes done because of sexual safety, because the fear
that if your daughter isn't married by a certain age,
a man might misuse her and then you know, she
(04:48):
kind of dishonors herself and the family. It's sometimes done
because of tradition. People just think like this is normal,
so they keep doing it. And it's always done in
a way because girls are looks upon as being less
than men and you know, less valuable, and so you
can do this with them. And I think, I mean
for me one of the So when the elders wanted
(05:10):
to take this on, one of the places where I
went was to Ethiopia and Africa to learn about this
much more, and I'll never forget. At some point I
sat down with a group in northern Ethiopia, where four
out of every five girls are married once they're eighteen,
and I sat down with this group of married girls,
young girls, and I asked the girl next to me,
(05:30):
how old when you got married? And she looked at
me and she said, well, I don't really know because
I don't have a birth cert. Difficult, so many girls
who get bored, people don't register them because it's oh
a girl, we don't need to register her. But she said,
I must have been between five and seven years old
when I got married. And I was sitting there, and
(05:52):
I mean, I still get emotional when I think about it,
because at that time my daughters were five and six
years old. I realized that even the lottery of life,
they have been born there, they would probably have been
child rights. And this is one of the things that
drives me in everything I do, this idea that it's
(06:12):
wrong that the place where you were born, that your
geography would define your destiny of life. You know, the
opportunities you get. I mean, I strongly, strongly believe that
everybody deserves equal opportunities. And that's why I'm so passionate
working on this issue.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
And so your organization is called Vow VOW. Tell us
about the moment that you had the idea for VOW
at one of your friend's weddings.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
That's correct. So you know, I've been done for the
last fifteen years, been working to end child marriage because yes,
an it's a sad problem. But the good news is
that there is a lot that we can do in
order to actually keep girls in school, to make sure
that communities realize that when you give the girls the
rights they deserve, you know that that that is could
(07:00):
not just that that is good not just for the girls,
but for the communities. And so we realized we need
to get more money to local organizations communities in Latin America,
in Africa and Asia that worked to change this and
to mobilize that money. One day, I was going to
(07:20):
a wedding of friends, and you know how it goes
when you go to a wedding week before and you
get the panic what should I wear? You know, and
what should I buy for the couple? And so I
went to their wedding website and you know, they had
like many you know, a wedding list where you know,
you can buy china and glass and I don't know what,
and they said, or alternatively give money to they had
(07:41):
chosen the good calls, and that's for me. It was
a light bulb moment. I thought like, wait, what if
the moment that people celebrates love under happy circumstances, people
who chose each other, and they're like, Okay, yes, I
want to share my life with you. What if we
turn those moments into fundraising moments to make sure that
girls elsewhere in the world can also choose love on
(08:04):
their own terms. And so that's where Voul for Girls
was born. And of course it's not just only people
are getting married who can contribute. I mean basically anybody
can contribute to Voul for Girls. And the beauty of
it always that one hundred percent of the money we
raise goes to the projects on the ground. And I've
seen with my own eyes how very small amounts of
(08:26):
money can make a huge difference for girls.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And I'm curious, you know some of those organizations that
are boots on the ground in these various locations, like
what are what are some of the things that they're doing?
Are they promoting education? Like what are some of the programs?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Promoting education is definitely one. Sometimes you know, girls don't
go to school because they don't have mentoral hygiene, you know, pats, etc.
So sometimes it's an intervention that that helps to keep
girls in school, or it is, you know, making sure
that the bus fee can be paid so that you know,
she doesn't have to walk alone along dangerous roads. A
lot of the projects what we see is basically helping girls,
(09:03):
bring them together in girls clubs where they learn about
their rights. I mean, I've met so many girls who
did not realize that they're equal to boys, that they
have rights, that they should have choice in life, and
that's incredibly empowering for girls. So, you know, I met,
for example, these group of girls and they had found
out that one of them was going to be married off,
(09:24):
and so they then collectively went to the father of
the girl who was going to be married off, and
they told him about their rights and about that it
was wiser to keep the girl in school, and they
managed to convince the father that indeed they should keep
the girl out of marriage for another couple of years.
I've also seen places where they do education around sexuality,
(09:44):
helping I mean, I've done too many girls in the
world who are told that they should not get pregnant,
but who do not know how you get pregnant. And
I mean, if you don't know how to avoid pregnancy,
of course, then you might end up with with an
early pregnancy and then and to being very married off.
Sometimes it's working with the fathers, helping them to understand
(10:07):
that what might seem the right thing to do is
actually not a wise thing to do marrying their daughters off.
And then what you see is this spreads like you know, like,
I don't know how you say this in English. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
It's like spreads like wildfire, basically wildfire.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
There you go. And so what you see is that
you then get entire communities who first where everybody is like,
of course, in our community, girls are married by the
age of sixteen. They're now like, no, no, no, we
do not marry our girls anymore before they're they're sixteen
or before they are eighteen. And so they take so
much pride in that that's amazing, and that in the
end benefits the boys in the men as well.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah. I remember a few years ago reading in that
book Half the Sky. It was so amazing to me
to read that when you invest in women, whether that's
education or you know, small loans for businesses or that
sort of thing, it benefits the entire community in such
a more drastic way than if you invest, just like
generally in the community. Because women are reinvesting in their community,
(11:05):
they're raising people who are more educated because they have
an education, and it like the cycle really continues when
you educate and help women and support women.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I mean, I think you covered a couple of these questions,
but I was wondering if you could share with us
some of your like some of the wins that your
organization has had. Have you been able to change laws anywhere?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So we have seen in the last fifteen years. I
think the biggest win is that the issue of child
marriage is now widely recognized as a problem. And I
think you know, because if you have a problem, but
you don't recognize it as a problem, you can't start
solving in So I think that, in a way is
the biggest win. Then what we have seen is that
there are more countries that have now laws that make
(11:49):
it very clear eighteen is the minimum age of marriage.
We also see more countries that have policies now to say, okay,
this is what we're actually going to do in order
to keep girls out of marriage, and so worldwide we
have seen the decrease worldwide. Before one out of every
four girls would get married before eighteen. That has now
gone down to one out of five girls, So that
(12:11):
is real progress. And if you look at the United States,
what is very interesting and I when we started working
on this, I hadn't realized that child marriage was also
an issue in Europe and in the United States. But
you see how sometimes our preconceptions can be completely wrong.
What is very interesting that the total number of child
(12:32):
prides in the United States is not as big as
for example, in India, whereas every year about three million
girls get married. I mean in the United States it's
much less. It's I believe around twenty five thousand. But
what was strange in the United States, until about five
or six years ago, in every state you could get
married before the age of eighteen, either because there's no
(12:54):
minimum law at all, so girls as young as two
could get married. Also boys, but it's often the girls
that had and stoop or they would have a minimum age,
but it wouldn't be eighteen. Let's say fourteen or fifteen,
or they would have eighteen as minimum age, but they
would say there can be exceptions. If the parents agree
or if the judge degrees, then it's okay. And I
(13:15):
of course don't get this because we do not trust.
In America, young people are not allowed to vote until
they're eighteen because apparently we think they're not wise enough
to do that. American people, young people are not allowed
to drink until they're I think it's eighteen. You know,
you're not allowed to twenty one. Yeah, yeah, And so
all these things you're considered too young to do them
(13:36):
until you're eighteen or even older. But for child marriage
it would be okay, that's yeah, doesn't make sense, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Thank you for all of the work that you're doing.
I mean it's incredible. I mean, to take all of
this on, it's so necessary. So how can people can
people donate to vow for girls?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Absolutely? I mean, look, my experience with all the change
making work that I've done my life is that we
can all make a difference, but nobody can do it alone.
So on this issue, part of what we need is funding.
And especially in a time where you know, governments are decreasing,
including in the United States. You know, USAID has ceased
(14:16):
to exist, So when money is actually is going down
for these things, I think we as ordinary humans need
to step up and help to make sure that that
financing continues to go to these to these young girls.
So yes, please give to Vow for Girls, and we
make sure that that money really rives with good local
(14:37):
organizations that do the work. And the only thing is
if you believe that it's important that laws get changed.
In the United States, we have now an increasing number
of states where laws have been changed to make sure
that eighteen is the minimum age of marriage and no exceptions.
But that is only I believe in about ten states
so far, so I would highly recommend it. If you
(15:00):
want to help there, you can also write to your
governor or your congressman or woman and urge them to
change that. It's an organization in the United States called
Unchained at Last that actually does a lot of work
and on their website you can find out what is
happening in your own state, etc. Wonderful.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, we'll link in the description to Vow for Girls
and Unchained as well.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, yes, and thank you for being with us today
and educating us allah on this.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I'm really grateful that you guys are using this International
Day of the Girl to highlight this really important issue.
And I'm very grateful to everybody who will help to
make sure that girls can be girls and not price.
That's right. Thanks Maybel, Thanks Maybel, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I just announced all my tour dates they just want
on sale this week. It's called the High and Mighty Tour.
I will be starting in February of next year, so
I will be touring from February through June. I haven't
added second shows yet, but we probably will be to
some of these. So go get your tickets now if
you want good seats and you want to come see
(16:08):
me perform, I will be on the High and Mighty Tour.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Do you want advice from Chelsea? Right into Dear Chelsea
Podcast at gmail dot com. Find full video episodes of
Dear Chelsea on YouTube by searching at Dear Chelsea Pod.
Dear Chelsea is edited and engineered by Brad Dickert executive
producer Catherine law And be sure to check out our
merch at Chelseahandler dot com
Hi there, thanks for being with us today. We're sitting
here with Princess Mabel von Naranya. Did I say your
name correctly?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Pretty well?
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Oh okay, well yeah, I'm an American, so you know
you got to cut me some slack. We're under a
lot of pressure these days. Thank you so much for
being with us today.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Very nice to be with you, Chelsea, really really lovely.
Oh wonderful.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay, So this is great. This is going to be
a nice educational episode for our listeners since many people
aren't aware. There's actually a child marriage crisis all around
the world, including here in the United States. So our
guest today is here to talk about that. For International
Day of the Girl, which is tomorrow, we wanted to
shed some light on this issue, and we have somebody
(00:43):
who knows a lot about it, so let's discuss it.
Says that nearly twelve million girls become brides each year,
which means that every three seconds a girl is forced
into marriage. I would presume that most Americans would never
think that that's happening in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Not just that Americans wouldn't think about it. I think
most people all over the world were ignoring this, and
I mean think about it. The girl. Every three seconds,
that's a girl and another girl, and it goes on
and on and on, and this is incredibly damaging. So
it's a huge problem. But this imagine that you are,
let's say, a fourteen year old girl, whether you're growing
(01:21):
up in the US or whether you're growing up in
Latin America in Africa. One day you come out of
school and basically your parents have decided that you're no
longer going back to school, and they're going to marry
you off to a man that you haven't chosen, who's
often a bit older than you are, and you're basically
shipped off to go live with his family. And these
girls then often end up being you know, abused, either
(01:45):
by their in laws or by their husbands. And also
these are girls that often for them, their their wedding
night is not a happy event. Their wedding night might
be the night when they get pregnant while they are
physically children themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Talk a little bit about some of the health risks
to younger girls who do get pregnant and like what
that can do to their bodies or why their bodies
are not prepared for that.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, I mean, we all remember when we were, you know, teenagers,
we might already get our period and things, but we're
physically still still children in a way. And so what
you see is that teenagers, girls who get pregnant are
much more likely to either have complications when they're pregnant
or in childbirths. They're more likely to die in childbirths.
But also what we see happening is that their babies
(02:34):
are much less likely to survive the first year of life.
And many of these child brides live in places where
you don't have good health services, so if they get complications,
they can't go to a hospital or to a clinic
to get supported. Can I just ask you how you
got it?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I know you've worked with Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela,
and how did you get involved in this work?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So I was very lucky, like you say, Chelsea, to
work with a group called the Elders, which Nelson Mandela
had created, and it's a group of former heads of government,
of former UN secretary generals, really eminent individuals, including President
Jimmy Carter was a member of this group, and they
wanted to work on gender inequality. They were saying that
the fact that men and women are not equals is
(03:17):
one of the biggest injustices of our times. And not
only that, is also kind of stupid because if we
want to get out of poverty, women have to play
their role. It's often women who lived their families out
of poverty. And so they then started looking at like
what's happening, And we then came across the issue of
child marriage, and the issue of child marriage was it's
(03:39):
on the one end, you know, the two words child marriage,
say it all and everybody realizes this is not okay.
But at the same time, the world was basically not
paying attention. And I think that to a large extent
and is because these girls, they're minors. They don't often
have passports, many of these girls don't speak English. A
lot of them in places like Africa Asia don't even
(04:00):
have access to mobile phones, and so these girls can't
really self organize. They do not realize that what is
happening here is actually not normal and that it should stop,
and that it's not good for them. If it stops,
it's also good for their families.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And to be clear, this is a very male problem.
It's not like women are looking at young girls and saying,
let's marry these girls off.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Right, like only men have to be told by the
government not to marry actual children.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Right. It's often the father's or the community as a
whole that drives this. And it's sometimes done because of poverty.
You know, if you are really poor in your marry
your daughter of you have one less mouth to feet.
It's sometimes done because of sexual safety, because the fear
that if your daughter isn't married by a certain age,
a man might misuse her and then you know, she
(04:48):
kind of dishonors herself and the family. It's sometimes done
because of tradition. People just think like this is normal,
so they keep doing it. And it's always done in
a way because girls are looks upon as being less
than men and you know, less valuable, and so you
can do this with them. And I think, I mean
for me one of the So when the elders wanted
(05:10):
to take this on, one of the places where I
went was to Ethiopia and Africa to learn about this
much more, and I'll never forget. At some point I
sat down with a group in northern Ethiopia, where four
out of every five girls are married once they're eighteen,
and I sat down with this group of married girls,
young girls, and I asked the girl next to me,
(05:30):
how old when you got married? And she looked at
me and she said, well, I don't really know because
I don't have a birth cert. Difficult, so many girls
who get bored, people don't register them because it's oh
a girl, we don't need to register her. But she said,
I must have been between five and seven years old
when I got married. And I was sitting there, and
(05:52):
I mean, I still get emotional when I think about it,
because at that time my daughters were five and six
years old. I realized that even the lottery of life,
they have been born there, they would probably have been
child rights. And this is one of the things that
drives me in everything I do, this idea that it's
(06:12):
wrong that the place where you were born, that your
geography would define your destiny of life. You know, the
opportunities you get. I mean, I strongly, strongly believe that
everybody deserves equal opportunities. And that's why I'm so passionate
working on this issue.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
And so your organization is called Vow VOW. Tell us
about the moment that you had the idea for VOW
at one of your friend's weddings.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
That's correct. So you know, I've been done for the
last fifteen years, been working to end child marriage because yes,
an it's a sad problem. But the good news is
that there is a lot that we can do in
order to actually keep girls in school, to make sure
that communities realize that when you give the girls the
rights they deserve, you know that that that is could
(07:00):
not just that that is good not just for the girls,
but for the communities. And so we realized we need
to get more money to local organizations communities in Latin America,
in Africa and Asia that worked to change this and
to mobilize that money. One day, I was going to
(07:20):
a wedding of friends, and you know how it goes
when you go to a wedding week before and you
get the panic what should I wear? You know, and
what should I buy for the couple? And so I
went to their wedding website and you know, they had
like many you know, a wedding list where you know,
you can buy china and glass and I don't know what,
and they said, or alternatively give money to they had
(07:41):
chosen the good calls, and that's for me. It was
a light bulb moment. I thought like, wait, what if
the moment that people celebrates love under happy circumstances, people
who chose each other, and they're like, Okay, yes, I
want to share my life with you. What if we
turn those moments into fundraising moments to make sure that
girls elsewhere in the world can also choose love on
(08:04):
their own terms. And so that's where Voul for Girls
was born. And of course it's not just only people
are getting married who can contribute. I mean basically anybody
can contribute to Voul for Girls. And the beauty of
it always that one hundred percent of the money we
raise goes to the projects on the ground. And I've
seen with my own eyes how very small amounts of
(08:26):
money can make a huge difference for girls.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And I'm curious, you know some of those organizations that
are boots on the ground in these various locations, like
what are what are some of the things that they're doing?
Are they promoting education? Like what are some of the programs?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Promoting education is definitely one. Sometimes you know, girls don't
go to school because they don't have mentoral hygiene, you know, pats, etc.
So sometimes it's an intervention that that helps to keep
girls in school, or it is, you know, making sure
that the bus fee can be paid so that you know,
she doesn't have to walk alone along dangerous roads. A
lot of the projects what we see is basically helping girls,
(09:03):
bring them together in girls clubs where they learn about
their rights. I mean, I've met so many girls who
did not realize that they're equal to boys, that they
have rights, that they should have choice in life, and
that's incredibly empowering for girls. So, you know, I met,
for example, these group of girls and they had found
out that one of them was going to be married off,
(09:24):
and so they then collectively went to the father of
the girl who was going to be married off, and
they told him about their rights and about that it
was wiser to keep the girl in school, and they
managed to convince the father that indeed they should keep
the girl out of marriage for another couple of years.
I've also seen places where they do education around sexuality,
(09:44):
helping I mean, I've done too many girls in the
world who are told that they should not get pregnant,
but who do not know how you get pregnant. And
I mean, if you don't know how to avoid pregnancy,
of course, then you might end up with with an
early pregnancy and then and to being very married off.
Sometimes it's working with the fathers, helping them to understand
(10:07):
that what might seem the right thing to do is
actually not a wise thing to do marrying their daughters off.
And then what you see is this spreads like you know, like,
I don't know how you say this in English. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
It's like spreads like wildfire, basically wildfire.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
There you go. And so what you see is that
you then get entire communities who first where everybody is like,
of course, in our community, girls are married by the
age of sixteen. They're now like, no, no, no, we
do not marry our girls anymore before they're they're sixteen
or before they are eighteen. And so they take so
much pride in that that's amazing, and that in the
end benefits the boys in the men as well.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah. I remember a few years ago reading in that
book Half the Sky. It was so amazing to me
to read that when you invest in women, whether that's
education or you know, small loans for businesses or that
sort of thing, it benefits the entire community in such
a more drastic way than if you invest, just like
generally in the community. Because women are reinvesting in their community,
(11:05):
they're raising people who are more educated because they have
an education, and it like the cycle really continues when
you educate and help women and support women.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I mean, I think you covered a couple of these questions,
but I was wondering if you could share with us
some of your like some of the wins that your
organization has had. Have you been able to change laws anywhere?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So we have seen in the last fifteen years. I
think the biggest win is that the issue of child
marriage is now widely recognized as a problem. And I
think you know, because if you have a problem, but
you don't recognize it as a problem, you can't start
solving in So I think that, in a way is
the biggest win. Then what we have seen is that
there are more countries that have now laws that make
(11:49):
it very clear eighteen is the minimum age of marriage.
We also see more countries that have policies now to say, okay,
this is what we're actually going to do in order
to keep girls out of marriage, and so worldwide we
have seen the decrease worldwide. Before one out of every
four girls would get married before eighteen. That has now
gone down to one out of five girls, So that
(12:11):
is real progress. And if you look at the United States,
what is very interesting and I when we started working
on this, I hadn't realized that child marriage was also
an issue in Europe and in the United States. But
you see how sometimes our preconceptions can be completely wrong.
What is very interesting that the total number of child
(12:32):
prides in the United States is not as big as
for example, in India, whereas every year about three million
girls get married. I mean in the United States it's
much less. It's I believe around twenty five thousand. But
what was strange in the United States, until about five
or six years ago, in every state you could get
married before the age of eighteen, either because there's no
(12:54):
minimum law at all, so girls as young as two
could get married. Also boys, but it's often the girls
that had and stoop or they would have a minimum age,
but it wouldn't be eighteen. Let's say fourteen or fifteen,
or they would have eighteen as minimum age, but they
would say there can be exceptions. If the parents agree
or if the judge degrees, then it's okay. And I
(13:15):
of course don't get this because we do not trust.
In America, young people are not allowed to vote until
they're eighteen because apparently we think they're not wise enough
to do that. American people, young people are not allowed
to drink until they're I think it's eighteen. You know,
you're not allowed to twenty one. Yeah, yeah, And so
all these things you're considered too young to do them
(13:36):
until you're eighteen or even older. But for child marriage
it would be okay, that's yeah, doesn't make sense, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Thank you for all of the work that you're doing.
I mean it's incredible. I mean, to take all of
this on, it's so necessary. So how can people can
people donate to vow for girls?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Absolutely? I mean, look, my experience with all the change
making work that I've done my life is that we
can all make a difference, but nobody can do it alone.
So on this issue, part of what we need is funding.
And especially in a time where you know, governments are decreasing,
including in the United States. You know, USAID has ceased
(14:16):
to exist, So when money is actually is going down
for these things, I think we as ordinary humans need
to step up and help to make sure that that
financing continues to go to these to these young girls.
So yes, please give to Vow for Girls, and we
make sure that that money really rives with good local
(14:37):
organizations that do the work. And the only thing is
if you believe that it's important that laws get changed.
In the United States, we have now an increasing number
of states where laws have been changed to make sure
that eighteen is the minimum age of marriage and no exceptions.
But that is only I believe in about ten states
so far, so I would highly recommend it. If you
(15:00):
want to help there, you can also write to your
governor or your congressman or woman and urge them to
change that. It's an organization in the United States called
Unchained at Last that actually does a lot of work
and on their website you can find out what is
happening in your own state, etc. Wonderful.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, we'll link in the description to Vow for Girls
and Unchained as well.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, yes, and thank you for being with us today
and educating us allah on this.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I'm really grateful that you guys are using this International
Day of the Girl to highlight this really important issue.
And I'm very grateful to everybody who will help to
make sure that girls can be girls and not price.
That's right. Thanks Maybel, Thanks Maybel, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I just announced all my tour dates they just want
on sale this week. It's called the High and Mighty Tour.
I will be starting in February of next year, so
I will be touring from February through June. I haven't
added second shows yet, but we probably will be to
some of these. So go get your tickets now if
you want good seats and you want to come see
(16:08):
me perform, I will be on the High and Mighty Tour.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Do you want advice from Chelsea? Right into Dear Chelsea
Podcast at gmail dot com. Find full video episodes of
Dear Chelsea on YouTube by searching at Dear Chelsea Pod.
Dear Chelsea is edited and engineered by Brad Dickert executive
producer Catherine law And be sure to check out our
merch at Chelseahandler dot com
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