On December 19, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/170 to declare October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child. Since 2012, it has been commemorated every October 11. Therefore, this year marks its tenth anniversary. As UNICEF reminds, still today in many parts of the planet the fact of being born a girl or a boy determines a person's opportunities to have access to health, Education and protection. Starting from this reality is core topic to address the defense of children's rights.

Girls around the world continue to face challenges in terms of their Education, physical and mental well-being, and the protection necessary for a life free of violence. To give an example with data provided by UNICEF: despite progress in access to Education, 1 in 4 adolescent girls and young women in West and Central Africa cannot read or write and more than 200 million girls and women have suffered female genital mutilation, a terrible internship that directly threatens their rights. In Spain, more than 18,000 girls are at risk of suffering this terrible internship and about 200 live in Navarra. They are under 14 years of age living in Spanish territory, but originating from countries where this internship is rooted, according to the report of the Wassu-UAB Foundation.

The causes of this gap are many and it is not my intention to address them in this article. My intention is rather a proposal and a request. The proposal arises from a reality: on the one hand, that adversity often brings with it ingenuity, creativity, learning to adapt to difficult situations and the ability to innovate. As the United Nations points out, the world's 600 million adolescent girls have demonstrated time and again that, given the resources and opportunities, they themselves can be the drivers of progress in their communities, rebuilding a stronger future for all that includes women, girls and boys, and men. On the other hand, and as a consequence of the above, the conviction that both girls and boys are agents of change and that, therefore, we cannot afford to lose half of humanity's talent.

Girls and boys are driving growth around the world. On International Girls' Day, let's commit to a comprehensive Education for girls without bias, a Education STEAM. This term was coined in 2010 by the Rhode Island School of Design by adding to the traditional STEM the necessary "A" for the arts to create a new and innovative learning model that combines the 4 disciplines (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics). More specifically, the proposal invited -and invites- to integrate the areas with an interdisciplinary approach instead of establishing separate knowledge spaces.

The term STEAM adds to the traditional STEM the necessary "A" for the arts to create a new and innovative learning model that combines science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

That is, taking into account the artistic and creative skills with the Education STEM and giving more value if possible to the aspect of innovation and the design, the development of curiosity and the search for new solutions. Thus, recognizing the leading role that art and design play together with the other disciplines that make up STEAM, we can place innovation as a transversal element in all of them and, together, promote female empowerment from them.