Allison Pearson launches the Class of 2010 Appeal

On June 8th, journalist and best-selling author Allison Pearson launched Camfed’s Appeal for the Class of 2010, to raise support for 2,000 girls to complete school by 2010. In her inimitable style, Allison told the audience of successful women and men in London how over two generations women in Britain have changed their status through education, and how girls in Africa can do the same today with Camfed’s help.

Allison used her wit and insight to draw parallels between the lives of women in Britain and in Africa and emphasise just how important education is to the girls and young women with whom Camfed works. She spoke of the amazing strides that British women have made in just two generations – as powerful CEOs and heads of industry today – but how incomprehensible that progress would be to her own grandmother, who only two generations ago left school at 13 to work in the homes of wealthy families and on the family farm.

“Show [my grandmother] the lives of the girls in ‘I Have a Story To Tell’ and she would understand them all too well. Hard labour, confined to poverty with no escape hatch. That was life for millions of girls in our country less than a century ago, before education gave them a choice.”

Allison asked us to imagine why similar leaps were not possible in as short a time for these girls and encouraged everyone to play a part in realising this potential by supporting girls in the Class of 2010.