Girl Rising
This is a simple story.
And it did not begin here.
This thing of beauty,
a joy forever rising.
This warm glow in darkness
like a harvest Moon.
celebrate when the Moon is bright.
But for years she was
a child of the dump.
blackened Sun and Moon.
And eyes seldom looked up from
the world of things tossed aside.
An orphan discarded, learning
lessons no school would teach.
Hunting the rot for glints of light,
metal containers, silver spoons.
Listening for the sound a prong
makes when it finds a plastic bottle.
Careful not to step on used syringes,
In daydreams she pictured freshly
sharpened pencils, rows of desks,
the chant of the alphabet.
Wandering visions to
pass long empty days
in a place where a girl is simply one
more thing the world has thrown away.
And when they found her,
when this girl's dreams came through
she had not dreamt of gold,
she had not wished for beauty.
Hers was a simple dream.
of a school uniform.
Shelves full of books.
A dream of school,
and how she dances behind
a contented smile
because she knows this is
Now this is her story to write.
She is the author and this is not
the end, it is just a beginning.
This is Wadley.
She's 8 years old.
She plays herself on the story from
her own life that you're about to see.
Just like Sokha did.
And just like the other girls you will meet.
Senna.
Azmera.
Suma.
Mariama.
And Ruksana.
Two others who we'll
call Yasmin and Amina
could not appear on their stories
out of concern for their safety.
Each of these girls was paired with
a writer from her own country
to help tell her story.
These are true stories.
If sometimes we imagined
to capture the things
wanted to see.
And their stories are important.
If they and the millions
of girls like them succeed
in getting the kind of education they need
incredible things will happen.
For them, for their families,
for their community, for their country.
For all of us.
Here's the hard thruth:
In spite of the fact that educating a girl
is one of the highest return investments
available in the developing world
millions of girls just aren't making it.
Right now there are 66 million
girls out of school.
And many more who struggle every day
to simply remain where they belong.
In a classroom.
WADLEY,
Haiti
The morning of January 12th 2010.
was bright and beautiful,
In a way that Wadley could not remember
any other morning ever having been before.
It was the dry season when
wild flowers bloomed
and flowers that bloomed on their own
without rain
fascinated some little girls.
It made impossible things seem possible.
Unachievable things appeared doable.
And the flowers, the hibiscus,
the azaleas, the bougainvilleas,
they all looked even brighter
when Wadley was happy.
Wadley! Wake up.
You're going to be late for school.
working to memorize
Toussaint L'Ouverture's final speech
as he was removed
by Haiti by the French,
after he tried to win independence
for the country.
Wadley liked to imagine herself defiant,
like brave Toussaint L'Ouverture.
But she also wished she'd be given
some words by women to recite.
Brave and strong women
like her mother.
Wadley, one snack is enough!
Every day Wadley brought two snacks
from her mother's tray.
One for herself and one for another child.
That day she chose a
new friend, Shelda.
been killed the week before.
He was a taxi driver and someone
had gotten into his car
with a gun and asked him to
get out.
He had refused and the
person had shot him.
Soon the moment came for Wadley
and her classmates to recite
big words from the history lesson.
Wadley watched some of her friends
recited or failed to recite.
The stammers, stutters and hesitations
seemed to her like a long poem.
A love poem to history.
Wadley!
"In overthrowing me
you have cut down
in Saint Domingue
only the trunk of the tree of liberty.
It will spring up again from the roots,
for they are many and they are deep."
That afternoon all
It was the dry season when
wild flowers bloomed.
And these words seemed a perfect
beginning for her composition
and a fitting book end to her day.
For they seemed to emerge
somehow out of the dream
that she had been having that morning.
Wadley could not remember how she
and her mother got to the open field
near the University.
It was still the dry season but wild
flowers no longer bloomed.
In the tent camp she often heard the
most days that the adults say:
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
This they said when
they were finally resigned
to the fact that their missing loved ones
Life tried to return to normal,
except now her mother roamed
the city during the day
looking for friends and family
for whom to seek help.
And instead of school
Wadley went to the water
fountain with a bucket.
Every day now, as she passed
through the camp
and the ruins of her neigborhood
Sometimes as she walked by
the rubble of the school itself
she tought she heard
the voices of her friends
Translation
Translate and read this script in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Girl Rising" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Mar. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/girl_rising_9000>.
Discuss this script with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In