It’s here! We're excited to share our fundraising campaign for our book which has launched and is now live. You know we’ve been working behind the scenes on this over the last few months, right from our scholars penning their life stories to our illustrator transforming their experiences into beautiful visuals. Now we are getting ready to share this with the world!
This is a book intended for a young adult audience (although everyone that’s previewed it says it’s much-needed reading material for all of us right now), featuring a collection of eight stories written by our global girl graduates from India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Brazil and Cameroon. These are their personal journeys sharing with the world what it is like growing up as a girl in their countries and how their path toward leadership has transformed their lives.
Proceeds from the fundraiser and sales of the book go directly to our girls and into our programming so you know what you have to do – donate if you can, get your friends and acquaintances to donate as well, and share this information far and wide so more folks can get their hands on this book!
In other exciting news, our new partnership with Didcot Girls’ School in Oxford is expanding into doing some work with girls from the UK to teach them about leadership and fundraising for GGP programming. If you are interested in inquiring about this for your daughter’s school, then please reach out. We are always eager to collaborate on local partnerships.
We've also heard recently from one of our 2017 GGP graduates from Mumbai whose amazing work in the community has been written about in local media. We are so proud of how our girls have taken their leadership skills and translated them to apply to community development programs in their neighborhoods and impact change through experiences all their own. Take a read of her article HERE.
These are the moments we know our work truly makes a difference. On that note, we are going to start a series on our website that shares how our girls in all different parts of the world have been impacted by and are experiencing the COVID-19 crisis. And what they're doing to be able to push forward in this difficult time. Our first partner and country featured is Bestspring Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria. You can read what our girls shared about their experiences by going to our HOMEPAGE..
However, the aforementioned piece was shared right before we all received the tragic and shocking news that our partner and friend in Lagos, Aramide Praise Oikelome, passed away on Thursday. The details of her death are unclear but there is a link to the COVID19 virus, however, we are unsure at this time. Aramide was a formidable force who inspired and motivated each and every person with whom she came into contact. Her absence will be felt very deeply by our girls in Nigeria and the hundreds of people that Aramide supported through her work at Bestspring. We have been speaking to our girls in Lagos and doing our best to push them forward and use Aramide’s death as a way to work even harder for the dream that they started working on together, the quest for both gender and racial equality within their communities. Rest in Power Aramide. We will miss you so very much.
Now more than ever, our book and the work that we do is vital to the communities where we work. Our book fundraiser will only be live until July 15. In less than 30 days we need to raise the funds required to ensure this book gets published. In light of what's happening around the world, the fight for racial equality and the struggles that those that are most vulnerable globally are experiencing because of the COVID-19 crisis, this is GGP’s reaction to our current circumstance. We hope you will find it a worthy initiative to support.
Much gratitude,
Julia Lynch, Founding Director.