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13-year-old Malita should be playing with her friends and going to school, but instead she worries about being forced by poverty to marry and becoming permanently separated from her family.
In rural Malawi, poor families like Malita’s often see early marriage as the only way of reducing the impact of severe poverty by reducing the number of mouths to feed at home. 
But, once married, the lives of girls like Malita are put at risk. Child brides are often unable to go to school and must move far away from their family homes and childhood memories. Child brides risk becoming sexually active at a very young age, risk HIV infection and AIDS, and also face the dangers of early pregnancy in a country with the one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world.
In the picture above, Malita has just had her head shaved as part of a ceremony that announces to her community that she has reached puberty and is ready to marry. After the head shaving ceremony, it is common for girls as young as 12–years-old to receive marriage proposals from men much, much older than themselves.
Across Malawi, EveryChild-funded Child Rights Clubs are challenging 
ceremonies like these so they do not put pressure on girls to become child brides but instead educate teenagers about the changes their bodies are going through and increase understandings about sexual health.
> Please make a donation today and help ensure girls like Malita do not lose their childhoods to early marriage
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