Irish Wedding News
12/03/2012
Today has been chosen to coincide with a conference about child marriage taking place in London, organised by the Foundation for Women’s Health Research and Development (FORWARD), Enabling Education Network (EENET) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). Gavin Weston will be speaking at the event.
It is estimated that 10 million girls a year are forced to marry worldwide. There are numerous detrimental consequences associated with child marriage, with physical, developmental, psychological and social implications. In the West African country of Niger where Harmattan is set, it is estimated that 76% of girls marry before the age of 18. Teenage brides with older husbands often have limited capacity to negotiate sexual relations, contraception and childbearing, and are especially vulnerable to HIV and domestic violence.
Although Harmattan is a work of fiction it draws on the author's own experiences. After art college in London, Belfast-born Gavin Weston travelled across North Africa and spent some time as an aid worker in Niger where he worked as a volunteer dogsbody, artist and English teacher.
Gavin Weston explained: "Some years later my family and I sponsored a six year-old child from Niger through a British NGO and followed her progress with great interest for a further six years, when we were informed that the child had been married just before her twelfth birthday, much to our great shock. I knew about child marriage but assumed that children in such programmes were protected somehow.
"A woman writer friend stated that she did not believe that men could write as women; as an experiment I tried to imagine what could have happened to 'our' sponsored child from a first person perspective. Once started, I began to research the problem further and the book kind of took on a life of its own."
Today's conference brings together members of the first network in the UK to address the problem of child marriage and will provide a platform for information sharing, discussion and insights into on-going programmes and interventions on child marriage.
Gavin Weston added: "I am delighted and honoured to be associated with such worthwhile organisations and very pleased to be invited to the conference."
(GK)
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Novel To Be Given Away To Raise Awareness Of Child Marriage
Debut novel Harmattan by Gavin Weston will be given away free today via Amazon Kindle to help promote awareness about child marriage.Today has been chosen to coincide with a conference about child marriage taking place in London, organised by the Foundation for Women’s Health Research and Development (FORWARD), Enabling Education Network (EENET) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). Gavin Weston will be speaking at the event.
It is estimated that 10 million girls a year are forced to marry worldwide. There are numerous detrimental consequences associated with child marriage, with physical, developmental, psychological and social implications. In the West African country of Niger where Harmattan is set, it is estimated that 76% of girls marry before the age of 18. Teenage brides with older husbands often have limited capacity to negotiate sexual relations, contraception and childbearing, and are especially vulnerable to HIV and domestic violence.
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Although Harmattan is a work of fiction it draws on the author's own experiences. After art college in London, Belfast-born Gavin Weston travelled across North Africa and spent some time as an aid worker in Niger where he worked as a volunteer dogsbody, artist and English teacher.
Gavin Weston explained: "Some years later my family and I sponsored a six year-old child from Niger through a British NGO and followed her progress with great interest for a further six years, when we were informed that the child had been married just before her twelfth birthday, much to our great shock. I knew about child marriage but assumed that children in such programmes were protected somehow.
"A woman writer friend stated that she did not believe that men could write as women; as an experiment I tried to imagine what could have happened to 'our' sponsored child from a first person perspective. Once started, I began to research the problem further and the book kind of took on a life of its own."
Today's conference brings together members of the first network in the UK to address the problem of child marriage and will provide a platform for information sharing, discussion and insights into on-going programmes and interventions on child marriage.
Gavin Weston added: "I am delighted and honoured to be associated with such worthwhile organisations and very pleased to be invited to the conference."
(GK)
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