To say that young girls living in Chad (located right in the centre of Africa) face an uphill battle is an understatement. If you were born as a girl there, there's a 70% chance that you'll be married before your 18th birthday, and you're more likely to die during childbirth than get to attend high school.

But it doesn't have to stay that way. Check out the UNICEF video above, which tells the story of child marriage, and why it's holding communities back.

By strengthening the health and education systems in Chad, a chain reaction of improvements can occur, particularly for girls. It has been suggested that for every additional year of education that a girl receives, her earnings will increase by 10 to 20%. Improved financial prospects reduce the need for girls to marry young in order to have food and shelter, and a more educated workforce enables innovation and prosperity that improves the whole community.

This is the sort of stuff that really excites me about international aid as a tool for stamping out extreme poverty. When critical areas of need are addressed in smart ways, we can unlock the human potential that exists in poverty-stricken countries. That's why global citizens demand that their governments make bold investments in their aid programs.

But we will not bring about the changes in policies and priorities without your support. 2015 is the year when the global goals for the next 15 years of poverty eradication will be announced. We'll need your voice to ensure that governments around the world get serious about achieving them!