CARE Empowers Child Grooms to Create Lasting Change #CAREKnowsHow

This post is sponsored by CARE.org to share the story of child grooms, but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

When people imagine the horror and injustice of child marriage, they often imagine young girls married to older men. Few realize that young boys also suffer the misery and misfortune of forced childhood marriage. This Father’s Day, CARE offers an opportunity to support former child grooms to create lasting change for the next generation of boys and girls in Nepal.

When Pannilal Yadav passed a rock painted with the words “I love you” while on a 9th grade trip to Nepal, he asked his teacher what the words meant. The teacher explained that this was a place where young people often met in secret to say things like that. “You cannot understand, Pannilal,” he said. “They are not married young like you.”

Pannilal was so young when he married his wife, Rajkumari, he barely remembers it. As was custom, Pannilal and his wife, Rajkumari, were forced into childhood marriage at 8 and 7 years old. Rajkumari dropped out of school immediately. When Rajkumari gave birth to their first child at 13, Pannilal also dropped out of school to support his family.

Nepal is one of only 8 countries in the world where more than 10% of boys are married before 18. These young child grooms endure psychological and physical trauma, just as young girls who are forced to marry. They are expected to have children shortly after puberty, often before they are ready, and usually drop out of school to support their young families.  Usually born poor, forced child marriage helps keep them poor and helps pass on poverty to the next generation.

While Pannila and Rajkumari’s story is difficult to read, they are working with CARE to educate people in Nepal about the harms of child marriages. Pannila is a community organizer with CARE’s Tipping Point Project and Rajkumari supports his efforts from home. They want to change the practice of child marriage, Pannila explains, because [bctt tweet=””Forcing children to marry doesn’t just push them deeper into poverty and threaten their health. It crushes their ambitions – whether they are girls or boys.””]

If you believe seven-year-old boys should not have their childhood taken from them, I urge you to join me in using CARE’s Congressional action portal to quickly reach out your members of Congress and remind them to support the people and organizations fighting child marriage.

CARE is a global humanitarian organization that fights poverty by empowering girls and women.