For a girl fleeing FGM or a forced child marriage, education is not just a classroom, it is sanctuary.

An educational scholarship becomes a lifeline at the very moment her world is collapsing. When she refuses harmful practices, she often pays a brutal price: rejection by her family, isolation from her community, and the sudden loss of food, shelter, and protection. She is punished not for wrongdoing, but for courage. In that moment, a scholarship is more than financial support, it is belief. It tells her: 

“Your life has value, your dreams matter, and you are not alone.”

Education restores what violence tries to steal.
It gives her safety when home is no longer safe.
It gives her autonomy when her body was no longer her choice.
It gives her a future when tradition tried to end it early.

Access to education gives a girl the opportunity to shape her future with dignity and confidence. Through learning, she gains skills that strengthen her voice and expand her choices, allowing her to participate fully in decisions about her life. Education supports understanding of health, wellbeing, and personal rights, while also opening pathways to economic opportunity and self-reliance. When a girl is educated, the benefits extend beyond the individual, she contributes to the strength, resilience, and progress of her family and community.

Finding a donor, someone willing to stand with her, is profoundly powerful. A donor becomes the bridge between despair and possibility. To a girl who has been cast out, donor support says: I see you. I choose you. I will invest in who you can become. That single act of solidarity can change the trajectory of her entire life.

And the impact does not stop with her.

An educated girl uplifts others. She becomes a role model, a protector, an advocate. She challenges harmful norms not with violence, but with knowledge. She returns to her community, when she is ready, not as a victim, but as a leader who proves that girls do not need to be cut, married, or silenced to belong.

When a donor supports a girl who ran for her life, they are not just funding school fees: they are funding freedom.