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Story by Teen Advisor Karina Jougla (pictured on right)

I’m 16 years old. She’s 14. My name is Karina. Her name is Massa. I live in Carpinteria, California. She lives in Todee, Liberia. We’re half a world away and our lives are dramatically different, but we’re both girls who have our entire futures before us.

We both have goals: we both want to go to college. Massa’s dream is to become a nurse. She wants to go to college in Monrovia — the capital of Liberia — and return to her village to work in the local health clinic. Massa has the potential to make an impact in her community; she just needs the resources and the chance to accomplish her goals.

Every morning, my alarm clock goes off at 6:30 a.m., and I go to school. Every morning, Massa wakes up before the crack of dawn to do chores. For Massa and other girls like her, housework is a huge responsibility. While the sun rises, Massa is busy sweeping the dirt floor of her family’s house, watching her younger siblings, running errands, making breakfast, and fetching water. Massa considers herself lucky to be enrolled in school, so if she finishes her chores, she starts a 45-minute walk to school. Classes go from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., but Massa is often late or absent because she has so much work around the house. For the majority of girls living in Liberia and other developing countries, work takes priority over education. For me and my peers in the United States, getting an education is our sole responsibility and main priority.

After school, I go to tennis practice, and then, I start my homework. After school, Massa’s work is not over. She walks home and begins her afternoon chores — preparing dinner, washing her single school uniform, fetching more water, babysitting her siblings, and washing dishes. Homework is secondary to completing chores. When Massa has extra time in the evenings, she tries to study, but it's difficult to do in the dark. Massa’s house doesn’t have electricity, and sometimes she tries to read by candlelight. But candles cost money, and it is a luxury for Massa to burn them for studying.

When I learned that Massa doesn’t have something as simple as candlelight to read by, I wonder why we can’t provide her and other girls with the basic resources they need to learn. These questions lead to other questions—why can’t they also have more than one school uniform? And clean, nearby drinking water? And electricity? I quickly realized that the situation for Massa and other girls living in developing countries isn’t as simple as a lack of candles; it’s many complications that add on to each other. Disease, poverty, violence, sexual abuse, hunger, illiteracy, child marriage—it’s all interconnected.

So where do we start to begin to create change? We can start by providing girls and boys with the basic opportunities to receive an education and health care. It may take more than candles, but if Massa is given a chance to succeed, she can make a change in her community. There’s a girl like Massa in every village in Liberia, and one by one, they can start to reshape the world.