On Friday, Oct. 11, while most RBHS students will be hastening out of the school building, Global Issues club and its members will file into the planetarium for a screening of Girl Rising.  The movie starts at 4:30 p.m. It tells the story of nine girls and the importance education played in their lives. 
Each semester, Global Issues chooses an ‘issue’ that they learn about and fundraise for. To start the year, the club picked education and have so far watched a documentary, Waiting for Superman, which puts a spotlight on discrepancies in the education system in the United States.  However, to apply the issue of education on an international scale, the club decided to organize a public screening of Girl Rising.
Senior Najeebah Hussain, a co-president of Global Issues, said the advocacy of female education is extremely important.
“I think the most important thing that can be taken away from the film is just that the lack of girls’ education is a really dire problem that goes unnoticed way too often,” Hussain said. “But that it is something we can change.”
Oct. 11 – the day of the screening – is the United Nation’s International Day of the Girl. On the Girl Rising website, the makers of the film encourage individuals and organizations to organize events starting from  Oct. 11 onwards to help ignite the women’s movement.
The process of change “may be gradual, and it will definitely take time, but these girls, in all different parts of the world all deserve a chance to live and grow and develop intellectually like we’ve been able to,” Hussain said. “Instead of having to succumb to things like child labor and arranged marriages, education will provide them not only with knowledge, but with respect, authority, opportunities.”
By Trisha Chaudhary