You Can Help End Child Marriage Around the World

Every two and a half seconds, a girl younger than 18 is forced into marriage. The consequences couldn’t be worse. Child marriage diminishes her chances at education, endangers her health, cuts short her personal growth and development and increases the likelihood that she’ll remain poor for life.

Child marriage is a gross human rights violation that puts young girls’ lives at risk and keeps them stuck in poverty.

Help us end child marriage and empower girls around the world to live healthy, productive lives! Your gift to CARE today will help create a brighter future for all!

Gift Information

$49
$100
$207
$336
$555
Or enter other amount:
$49 can help keep a girl in school for a year, helping prevent her from becoming a child bride.
$100 can train four health workers to support healthy pregnancies and births for poor mothers and newborns.
$207 can provide three families shelter in emergencies, reducing the risk of parents selling their daughters into marriage to help meet her basic needs.
$336 can provide 12 teachers with essential classroom supplies to help educate the next generation of girls.
$555 can establish a community garden for five families, helping relieve parents of the stress of not being able to feed their children and reducing the chance their girls will be married off early.
Minimum donation amount of $10. If you would like to donate less than $10.00, please use the printable Give by Mail donation form and mail your donation to CARE.

Help Us Change The Facts

39,000 GIRLS become child brides every single day.

Half of all girls in the developing world will become underage mothers.

Girls younger than 15 are 5 times more likely to die giving birth than those in their 20s.
Child brides are 2 times as likely to be beaten by their husbands.

A child bride is significantly more likely to become infected with HIV.

Nana's Story



When she was 15 her parents forced her to marry a 28-year-old man. There was no wedding. The marriage began when her new husband came and took Nana by force from a friend's house.

"I was screaming and crying for help. Nobody helped," she says.

Nana was quickly pregnant with her son. She tried to stay in school and continue music lessons, but her husband kept coming to the school and physically dragging her home.

Nana wanted to leave her husband but had nowhere to go. When she returned to her parents' house, he arrived drunk and smashed their windows with rocks. Police refused to get involved, calling it a family matter.

Find out what happened >

Nana finally freed herself by fleeing to the home of relatives more than 60 miles away. After 3 months away from home her husband gave up and accepted divorce. Nana and her son returned to their home village to start a new life, but their hopes were dashed when a simmering conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia boiled over into an all-out war in 2008.

Many farming families lost their farmland, Nana's among them. Depressed, broke and out of options, Nana suffered silently at home.

"I saw no place for myself in the outside world," she says.

A concerned neighbor told Nana about a women's empowerment program sponsored by CARE and five local partner organizations. The program helps marginalized women in Caucasus post-conflict zones secure their legal rights and take an active role in their life decisions.

Nana never before understood her legal rights or how to stand up for them. Once she did, she started taking more control of her life; first in small ways, then in big ways. She successfully challenged school officials who tried to deny her son the free school books to which he was entitled. And then she took her ex-husband to court and won monthly child support payments.

"I've become stronger," she says. "I would not have been able to do that before."

Mission Statement

CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. Through our community-based efforts focused on empowering women, we work to improve basic education, prevent the spread of disease, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect natural resources. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters.



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