The Ford Foundation, a nonprofit grantmaking organization that has been in operation for more than 75 years, recently announced it is committing $25 million over the next five years to help stop child marriage. While it is generally acknowledged that marriages involving girls under 18 are unacceptable, the practice is still carried out in many countries, affecting 10 million girls every year.

"For the first time in memory, there is the beginning of momentum, the beginning of hope, not just to make progress on this issue, but to end child marriage in a generation," said Luis Ubinas, president of the Ford Foundation.

One in seven of these arrangements involve girls who are married before the age of 15, and many are performed without mutual consent. This practice has widespread negative effects, including a perpetual poverty cycle, since these girls are much less likely to receive education and more often bear children at young ages, suffer from hunger, illiteracy, social exclusion, poverty and violence.

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