LESSON PLANS - ITVS

07About the DocumentaryIntergenerational ProstitutionAs Sheryl WuDunn and our cast of gender equality advocatesargues, tradition is, in many ways, the greater evil. In too manyplaces in the world, tradition still is used to marginalize women,to keep them down and in their place. This vicious cycle repeatsitself generation after generation, damaging and ending lives andundermining the ability of thousands of women improve theirquality of life and live their full potential. The key — as Nicholasand actress America Ferrera discover in India — is intervention bysomeone from the inside, someone in fact, very like Urmi Basu.A social worker and an educated, middle-class Bengali, Urmihas dedicated her life to stopping the cycle of intergenerationalprostitution in India, where 90 percent of girls born to sex workersfollow in their mother’s footsteps. What she is up against is neatlyillustrated by one of the young girls in her care, Monisha, who ison the brink of being wrenched out of school and likely sold to abrothel by her own family — a family that belongs to a sub-caste ofsex workers. What keeps Urmi going is girls like Sushmita — andmore to the point, women like Sushmita’s mother, Shoma, whohas lived the utter brutality and desolation of prostitution everyday of her life and desperately wants a different fate for herdaughter. Shoma’s hope for her child is the seed of real and lastingchange.Economic EmpowermentWhen women have equal control over their finances and thefinancial decision-making on the personal, community, andnational level, everyone benefits. Sheryl WuDunn and the manycontributors who lent their voices and considerable expertise toHalf the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for WomenWorldwide all stress that putting money in the hands of a poorwoman changes everything. On their visit to Kenya, Nicholas andactress Olivia Wilde witness the impact of the economic empowermentof women first-hand. In this episode’s final segment, theyexplore the impact and challenges of microfinance and the waysii iis transforming the lives of women and those around them. Webegin with Jane Ngoiri, a former sex worker-turned-dressmakerwho is now able to send her four children to school, where theyare each at the top of their class, and end with Rebecca Lollosoli,a Samburu woman who built a safe haven for women on the slenderthread of a jewelry-making business. Nicholas and Olivia seefor themselves the dramatic and tangible transformation that canbe set in motion by a woman with a little bit of money of her ownand a system of support to help her make the best use of herfinancial and personal resources. Replicate the experiment severalmillion times, and the world will be an entirely different place.The episode — and the series — ends with an urgent call to action,an invitation to the viewer to take up the central moral challengeof our time, and to join a movement that will tap the immensepotential represented by women to create a more peaceful andmore prosperous world for us all.