Dear Friends,

Thank you for standing with Too Young to Wed (TYTW). Together, we're creating a brighter, safer future for many of the world's most vulnerable girls and their families. Let us continue to unite against child marriage and protect the dreams of every girl. 

As we celebrate Eid al-Fitr, we extend our heartfelt thanks to all who have supported TYTW’s initiatives, including our current campaign Protect Innocence: End the Sale of Afghan Girls. Your generosity in these blessed days brings strength to our mission to empower girls and end child marriage.

Eid Mubarak!

The TYTW Team

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A Salaam Alikum brothers and sisters,
We hope that all of you experienced a blessed Ramadan. 

As we draw near to Lailatul Qadr (the Night of Power), let’s open our hearts and extend our compassion to ensure that those fasting in marginalized communities have enough to eat. We encourage you to consider generously donating to TYTW’s initiative Protect Innocence: End the Sale of Afghan Girls | LaunchGood and earn Sadaqah Jareyah (continuous rewards) by spreading awareness among your family and friends. Your act of kindness provides crucial support to more than 15,000 at-risk Afghans currently benefiting from TYTW's Parwana Program, including girls like Sediqa. 

Eight-year-old Sediqa is one of five girls in her family who were sold into marriage. Sediqa’s father, Shaistal, at the age of 42, left home in Badghis province with his wife and children in the hope of finding relief from war and drought. They had heard, falsely, they could receive assistance at Shahrak-e-Sabz camp. Shaistal quickly fell into debt while trying to provide for his family. Desperate, he resorted to selling one of his kidneys to a man in need. However, he soon fell ill from an infection and accrued even more debt to cover the resulting hospital bills. Ultimately, he felt he had no other option but to sell his daughters. During a survey of vulnerable families, TYTW promptly enrolled Sediqa’s family in its programming to safeguard Sediqa and her sisters, and provide their family with immediate food, vocational training, and livelihood opportunities.

Your generous Sadaqah/Zakaat can help Sediqa, her siblings, and thousands of girls in similar situations to stay safe and provide them with the necessary support to build a better future. TYTW’s Parwana Program provides case management and family sensitization on child marriage, food to help meet immediate needs, education programming for girls, and start-up capital and livelihoods training to many of the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach Afghan girls and their families. 

Thank you for your generosity and for actively contributing to the protection of girls from mistreatment.  

With gratitude, 

The Too Young to Wed (TYTW) Team

Benazir, 10, seen here making bread.

Dear Friends,

Ramadan Mubarak!

We at Too Young to Wed (TYTW) are reaching out with profound thanks for your generous support of our past campaigns. We encourage you to visit the page of TYTW’s 2024 Ramadan campaign and learn more about some of the incredible families you can empower through your donations: Protect Innocence: End the Sale of Afghan Girls | LaunchGood

Your kindness has played a vital role in our mission to combat child marriage and protect girls like Benazir, pictured above. At just seven years old, Benazir was sold into marriage by her father. Burdened with the impossibility of feeding his eight children, her father saw no other choice. However, the generosity of supporters like you allowed TYTW to step in, and we successfully worked with the family and community leaders to annul Benazir’s marriage. Additionally, through our holistic family support programming, TYTW provided her father with vocational support to open his own shop -- bolstering the family’s self-reliance and paving the way for Benazir to pursue her dreams of education instead of being bound by the chains of child marriage.

Your generosity not only transforms lives like Benazir’s but also resonates as a ray of hope in our collective fight to end child marriage. Throughout this holy time, we encourage you to share our mission with your friends and family. Spreading the word about TYTW’s current campaign significantly amplifies the impact of your support, bringing us closer to a world where every young girl has the opportunity to thrive. Together, we can create lasting change for so many deserving girls just like Benazir.

In Solidarity,

The TYTW Team

You're Invited!

Eid Mubarak to all our Muslim friends celebrating this evening. We wish you love, blessings and peace on this joyous day.

As Muslims around the world gather to celebrate, millions of Yemeni families are facing another bittersweet holiday, clouded by war and a global pandemic. Despite these enormous challenges, your amazing support for our campaign allows TYTW, in partnership with Solidarios Sin Fronteras, to provide clean water and thousands of life-saving breakfasts, keeping girls in school and safe from child marriage.

Your generosity is a lifeline for these beautiful girls.

Again, we sincerely thank you for your kindness and compassion. 

Photo by Arwa Almaqtari for TYTW.

With gratitude,

Stephanie Sinclair and the TYTW Team

Salaam Friends,

Ramadan Mubarak! 

In this hopeful time of renewal as the holy season of Ramadan begins, we come to you with immense gratitude. Last year—in the midst of some of the most challenging times imaginable for Yemen, for girls, and for the world—you showed up as a source of light and hope. You chose generosity—selflessly sharing your own resources when so much was at stake, and so much loss threatened. You showed vulnerable girls, their families, and this community how compassionate, thoughtful, and kind you are.

We are delighted to report that now, the Yemeni girls Too Young to Wed (TYTW) serves are officially back in school. Their return has allowed TYTW to resume our original, evidence-based child marriage prevention program in Yemen, in partnership with Solidarity Without Borders. Our proven dual model— education and food security interventions, coupled with parental incentives —works to keep hundreds of girls in school and out of child marriages, with access to vital nutrition and water. TYTW has provided over 100,000 meals to vulnerable girls in Yemen through this initiative, helping to keep them safe from child marriage and famine. 

This Ramadan, we are pleased to invite our outstanding community to once again play an integral role in keeping hundreds of the most vulnerable girls safe and nourished. Should we have the honor of your renewed contribution this year, your gift will protect girls from violence, increase girls’ lifespans, help combat infant mortality, economically empower families, and support the planet. You’ll also drive generational change, as each girl who evades child marriage is more likely to prevent her own children from marrying early. 

We encourage you to share this opportunity to invest in girls’ protection and empowerment with your friends, family, and networks. As little as $15 USD can feed a vulnerable girl for a month. 

From all of us at TYTW, we wish you and yours a blessed Ramadan. 

With gratitude,

Stephanie and the TYTW Team 

Dear Friends, 

Less than three hours to go until Too Young to Wed’s first Virtual Holiday Fest to End Child Marriage! Join us at 2:00pm EST via live stream on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. 

The event program booklet is viewable here. We can’t wait to inspire you with a showcase of the impact YOU have made possible throughout this year’s many challenges. 

We look forward to seeing you all soon.

In solidarity,

Stephanie and the TYTW Team

Dear Friends,

Thank you to all who’ve registered thus far to join us tomorrow at 2:00pm EDT for our first Virtual Holiday Fest to End Child Marriage! You can join via live stream on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. 

Our program is packed to the brim with inspiring speakers, fabulous performers, and high-impact footage from Too Young to Wed’s field programs that your support makes possible. 

Registration is still open, so please do share with your family and friends. We can’t wait to see you tomorrow! 

In solidarity,

Stephanie and the TYTW Team

Dear Friends: 

We hope you can join Too Young to Wed tomorrow for our first-ever Virtual Holiday Fest to End Child Marriage, Saturday December 12 at 2:00-3:00PM EDT. Be sure to register today! You can join via live stream on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. 

You’ll join a unique group of activists, artists, and change-makers for the event, bringing our passionate global community -- with participants joining from California, New York, Switzerland, Iran, Kenya, India, and Australia -- together to empower young girls around the world.  

You’ll be inspired by special guests including internationally-acclaimed Chilean author and activist Isabel Allende, Kenyan filmmaker / activist Jeremiah Kipainoi, and singer-songwriter-actress Allie Gonino. The event will be hosted by award-winning actress Julianne Nicholson. We’ll share footage from our multiple field programs (including Yemen), along with a short film from our recent Tehani Photo Workshop held in India with courageous acid attack survivors. 

Your attendance will enhance our field programming supporting survivors and young girls at risk of child marriage. 

Visit TYTW’s official event page for more information and registration details: https://bit.ly/36wGQeu 

We can’t wait to see you there!  

With gratitude,

Stephanie and the TYTW Team

Dear Generous Supporters,

What a blessing it has been to see so many kindhearted souls come together during the holy time of Ramadan in support of children and families in Yemen. Thank you for your incredible support. 

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, your generosity helped exceed an ambitious fundraising goal of $32,000 -- ensuring the lifesaving resources needed to supply 3,200 people with clean water in displacement camps, and provide 300 food boxes to families with children on a monthly basis. Your gift also helps keep girls safe from child marriage by relieving a key economic stressor on displaced and impoverished families, who often turn to the practice out of desperation for one less mouth to feed -- a situation made all the worse by war and, now, the global pandemic. 

Inspired by the kindness of donors like you, survivor and TYTW Advisory Board member Gabriella Gillespie took it upon herself to give the campaign a final push by promising to shave her head if the fundraising goal was reached. And, wouldn’t you know it, it worked! 

“Thank you doesn’t seem enough to say how much I appreciate everybody who has donated to this cause,” she said just moments before the shave. Click here to watch the amazing (and funny!) video of Gaby fulfilling her promise in a powerful reclamation of her May 28th birthday. We appreciate you too Gaby! Thank you! 

Child marriage is a global issue that spans countries, cultures, religions and ethnicities. Child brides can be found in every region in the world, from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America to South Asia, Europe and the United States. In addition to global education and advocacy campaigns, TYTW’s on-the-ground work focuses on areas where child marriage is most egregious and underreported. Currently, we have programs in Kenya, Nepal, Yemen, Nigeria and the U.S. We invite you to continue following TYTW’s work in Yemen and beyond by signing up for our newsletter for regular program updates, visiting our website, or following TYTW on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Our team can be reached directly at info@tooyoungtowed.org. 

On behalf of countless vulnerable girls you have empowered, we thank you.

With warmest wishes for good health and safety,

Stephanie Sinclair

Founding Executive Director

Too Young to Wed

Ramadan Mubarak!  We hope this message finds each of you in peace and good health as you spend time with loved ones. 

Your generosity and dedication to supporting the most vulnerable Yemeni children and families during the COVID-19 crisis has been deeply inspiring to all of us at Too Young to Wed (“TYTW”). In fact, we are excited to share that we are very close to meeting our fundraising goal! To help ensure we cross the finish line, child marriage survivor and TYTW Advisory Board member Gabriella Gillespie volunteered to join the Shave Your Head Challenge if we reach our goal of raising $32,000 by May 28th.

As we enter the final and last odd night of Ramadan, please give and share with hopes that you will find the night of power. 

The May 28th date is one of high significance for Gaby; not only is it her birthday, it is also the day she was taken to be married off at the age of 13. In a powerful act of reclamation, Gaby’s gesture will serve as a commemoration of reaching a crucial milestone in supporting vulnerable Yemeni children, and helping to protect girls at risk from suffering similar trauma.

“As a survivor of child marriage, I can tell you emphatically that no child should ever live through the trauma I did. Every child deserves to live free from fear, and have access to clean water, food, an education, and the opportunity to wait until adulthood to marry,” Gaby shared.

So, just how close are we to meeting our fundraising goal? If all 2,600 donors to this campaign got a friend or family member to donate just $3, we would be there! The message has never been clearer: transformative change is possible when enough caring people unite to make a difference. You are a beautiful reminder of the power of united generosity.

Again, we thank you tremendously and from the bottom of our hearts for your kindness and compassion.

Warmest wishes,

Stephanie Sinclair & the TYTW Team

The following is a special message from Too Young to Wed Advisory Board Member Gabriella Gillespie, a child marriage survivor who lived in Yemen for nearly 17 years:

Dear Friends,

It is difficult to express how grateful I am to everyone who has donated to our COVID-19 Yemeni relief program, especially through the Holy month of Ramadan. Thank you, many times over, for your generosity and kindness.

Yemen is a country close to my heart. Taken to live there by my father as a child, I was forced out of school and into marriage at the age of 13. I eventually escaped my marriage but was never able to return to school. While those years were deeply traumatic for me, I will never forget the kindness shown to me by the Yemeni people in my time of need.

Yemeni people are resilient and humble, generous, kind, and happy people. They work hard to provide for their families, but no matter how resilient a person is, when their livelihood is taken away and chances of survival are limited, many must turn to drastic measures. Forcing one’s own children into early marriage is not seen as cruel, but as a means of survival for many families. Ravaged by war and famine for many years, Yemen—one of the world’s poorest countries—has much more to contend with than most countries facing COVID-19.

I proudly serve on the Advisory Board of Too Young to Wed (TYTW), which has supported more than 1,000 vulnerable Yemeni schoolchildren since before this pandemic began. Oftentimes, the daily breakfast at school provided by TYTW would be the only meal our students would eat that day. The closure of Yemeni schools takes away not only that daily meal, threatening hunger and malnutrition; it also places girls at higher risk of gender-based violence, including child marriages. TYTW is working on the ground, in partnership with grassroots agency Solidarios Sin Fronteras (Solidarity Without Borders), to provide meal deliveries and clean water to the neediest families—relieving a tremendous economic burden on them and lessening the likelihood that their young daughters will be forced into marriage early as a means of material provision.

As a survivor of child marriage, I can tell you emphatically that no child should ever live through the trauma that I did. Every child deserves to live free from fear, and have access to clean water, food, an education, and the opportunity to wait until adulthood to marry. 

I still have family in Yemen and I know, if they could, they would say with me that thank you just doesn’t seem enough, but we will say it anyway: thank you, thank you, thank you for your generosity and dedication to keeping girls healthy and safe.

Warmly,

Gabriella Gillespie

You can learn more details about Gabriella’s extraordinary life experience through her book, A Father’s Betrayal.

About Gabriella Gillespie:

At the age of 13, Gaby and her sisters were taken abroad from their home in England under the guise of a holiday to Yemen where they were unwittingly sold as child brides by their father. One of her sisters committed suicide on her wedding night. After suffering horrendous sexual, physical, and mental abuse for 17 years, Gaby finally managed to escape and return to Britain with her five children.

Gaby is now a campaigner and activist who works alongside a number of charities to eradicate child and forced marriages. She has spoken publicly about her past to give insight into an issue that is rarely discussed openly. Gaby also hopes to encourage others to speak out and seek help if they feel they are in danger. She has received two awards for her advocacy, The Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize Award 2015 and the True Honour Award 2017. Below is a photo of Gabriella (far left) with her children Taz, Justina, Adam, Sandy and Luke back in Britain.

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Dear Friends,

Thank you for your incredible generosity, helping us provide urgently needed food, clean water, and sanitation assistance to the most vulnerable Yemeni families. This week, we are pleased to share a special video message from our lead logistical manager on the ground in Yemen, Faten, who personally administers many of the sanitary food deliveries herself. Click here to see the video and learn more about how your donation impacts families directly, keeping girls safe from being forced into child marriages by addressing one of the most significant root causes, food insecurity. 

Among other reflections, Faten shares in the video: “I want to tell everyone who can hear me now, how much happiness you have given to families, students—even just through the water program. Many people here in Yemen, thousands, are suffering every day…there is nothing here for a normal life. Even just giving a little bit means so much to these families. Specifically, during Ramadan, it means a lot for all of us, for all Muslims.”

You are making a tremendous difference in the lives of so many who are vulnerable to the direct and indirect consequences, both health and safety-related, of COVID-19--and we cannot thank you enough. 

With tremendous gratitude,

Too Young to Wed

Dear Friends, 

With the start of the holy month of Ramadan, we wish you and your loved ones peace and safety in these extraordinary and difficult times.

Too Young to Wed wishes to thank all who have supported this campaign for the overwhelming positive and generous response. Your support is invaluable and will make a major difference in providing Yemeni children with nutritious food and clean water -- while also keeping them safe from child marriages by relieving a key economic burden faced by families. 

Your support comes at a critical time. Fighting continues in Yemen despite a ceasefire announced April 9 in response to COVID-19. Nation-wide flooding and the largest modern cholera outbreak have exacerbated already fragile conditions faced by civilians, and an increase in cases of COVID-19 puts already vulnerable people further at risk. Many of the families TYTW supports rely on the income of daily wage earners. When forced to stay at home, they go without food and essential items.

It takes our team between four and six hours every day to deliver food boxes (with holiday items, such as dates, included this month) to the homes of vulnerable families, as they work in highly restrictive and unsafe conditions. “It would be a disaster,” our team wrote in a recent program update, if COVID-19 cases accelerated in Yemen with the high frequency they have in Europe and the United States.

In these extraordinary times for Yemen and for the world, it is now essential more than ever to keep vulnerable children, especially girls at risk of gender-based violence, at the forefront of our priorities. Thank you for supporting those most vulnerable in this global time of need. We are honored to share our work with the Launchgood community and would most appreciative if you could please share our campaign with your friends and family. 

In solidarity,

Stephanie Sinclair and the TYTW Team