Girl's Gone Child: "I came from a place where children would get married with dolls in their hands."

For the next few weeks I'll be sharing the stories of girls and women who shared their stories with me and hundreds of others while at the Women in the World Conference: London. I was fortunate enough to attend as a guest of Dove who sponsored the event as well as hosted a mentoring lunch, bringing girls and mentors from all over the world together to share, listen, and inspire one another to go forth. I was able to meet and interact with incredible women and girls while at the conference and was especially floored by Afghan rapper and activist, Sonita Alizadeh who shared her story and her song while on the conference stage.

From PRI:

Sonita grew up in Tehran, Iran’s capital city. Her family fled Afghanistan when she was 8 years old because of war. She found a non-profit that taught undocumented Afghan kids. There she learned karate, photography, guitar, and she started singing and rapping.

Her music quickly got recognition. Sonita met an Iranian director who helped her polish up her style and make music videos, and that led to a few awards. Everything was perfect. Until it wasn’t. “One day my mom told me, ‘You have to return to Afghanistan with me. There’s a man there who wants to marry you. Your brother’s engaged and we need your dowry money to pay for his wedding.’”

Sonita was devastated. So she wrote the song "Brides for Sale." The song starts “Let me whisper, so no one hears that I speak of selling girls. My voice shouldn’t be heard since it’s against Sharia. Women must remain silent… this is our tradition.”

A few weeks after the video went viral, Sonita was contacted by The Strongheart Group who she has since partnered with. Their goal is to build an international campaign to raise awareness about child marriage for the purpose of affecting legislation and public funding. Sonita was also given a visa as well as a full scholarship to a high school in Utah where she now attends.

"I came from a place where children would get married with dolls in their hands — a place where women will get in trouble if they complain about their wages. The first thing I want to do to protect women is to help girls get out of child marriages. If I don't do that, I’ll never find peace.

In order to reach this goal, I share my story: A story about the people being forced into marriage. With my songs, with my voice, and with my poems, I will share the life stories of all these children.

Please close your eyes for a moment, and put yourself in place of a kid who doesn’t have a right to make a choice about her own future. She doesn't know who she is going to get married to. She's a child herself — she doesn't know how to raise a children. She doesn’t know how to be apart from her mother.

You can open your eyes now.

I hope you can give these children love, and you can help these children--by sharing their stories. Until everyone knows, and everyone’s goal are the same as mine: to save these children from child marriages. That is my job: traveling around the world, to make these women's voices heard."

And that is exactly what she's doing.

You can read about Sonita's partnership with The Strongheart Group, here and follow Sonita on Facebook, here. Sonita is also the subject of a documentary film currently in production with filmmaker Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami: