We have some really, really exciting news:

That’s right! Breadpig, fellow geeky world savers, are teaming up with Arohon to match every donation you make between now, and our ever-scarily-fast-approaching Kilimanjaro climb in September, YAY!

Remember, we’re trying to raise at least £5000 to establish a brand new education and community centre for women and girls in rural Bangladesh, in an area where women wanting to pursue their own careers face much cultural opposition. Furthermore, investing in women and girls has been shown to have far reaching effects in helping the climb out of poverty. From The Girl Effect, this wonderful factsheet has lots of lovely statistics to show us this:

When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)

An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school:
15 to 25 percent. (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881 [Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)

Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers. (George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 1207–27.)

We are already climbing Mt Kilimanjaro to convince you, but we have a long way to go to raise the funds we need to build and maintain our first project, so we’re absolutely thrilled to have the help of Breadpig.

So basically, there has never been a better time to donate, so make sure you do so now! Visit http://donate.arohon.com/.

Breadpig, we salute you!