So Many Thank You's and So Much to Celebrate!

Huge news and so much to be grateful for on this update so read on!

Big, big thanks to the 206 amazing folks around the globe who donated £7,000+ to our book campaign for More Than One Voice. This is way beyond what our original goal was and we're just absolutely blown away about the impact we will be able to create – thanks to your generosity not only will we be able to publish our book, but we will also be able to run our Blended Learning Program in Jordan, Afghanistan, South Africa, Nigeria and Haiti this autumn. The book publishing process begins at the end of this month and we will be thinking of all you wonderful people that chose to support this effort.

Buckets of gratitude also to the team at Cisco Portugal who hosted a walk/run fundraiser on June 26 to contribute around $11,000 for Global Girl Project. We have to thank our board member Wendy Rasin for organizing this and everyone that participated.

We are super proud to share that our Nigerian partner Bestspring Foundation have run their first ever community event through the Blended Learning Leadership Initiative this past weekend. Check out their photos above. The topic was waste management and the girls were excited to be able to be leaders in their community. They shared that they each felt very privileged to be global girls and to be the first ambassadors for the Global Girl Program in Lagos, Nigeria and they are excited for us to be able to work with even more girls in the coming year. We are also excited that our Haitian partners Foundation TOYA are hosting three separate smaller events on teenage pregnancy, domesticity and gender inequality next weekend so stay tuned!!

Most importantly, we have to turn the spotlight on our amazing volunteers. GGP is a grassroots organization doing big things around the world. With a staff of one, we rely almost exclusively on the passion, the energy, and the ideas of our highly skilled volunteers. 

·      Here’s a huge shout out to the team that is our extraordinary book volunteers who brought this project into fruition: Mariana Alejandra Besana (Max), Paloma Aravaca Sinnige, Camila Gabrielle Frasson, Kate Novo and Ruksana Hussain.

·      We also have Sherry from Disney in the US who is working with us on creating staff manuals, and Deepti who's going to start working with us creating an audiobook, and Uduak from Nigeria who is working with us to create an impact report, mentoring program protocols and also some workshops to deliver to our exchange scholars.

·      We want to thank our impact group as well: Joe from Ripple Ventures, his intern Tom, Gill from UBS and Stella our board chair who are working with us to create an impact report. We cannot run without our volunteers and we want to really send a lot of gratitude out to them. 

 We’ll leave you with a podcast called SheSlays that our director featured in so please take a listen here and share.

Much gratitude,
Julia Lynch, Founding Director.

Global Girl Expands into Jordan, Our Book Campaign, and Our Community Event in Nigeria!

One of the illustrations from our upcoming book - More Than One Voice

Happy July folks! If you’ve been following us online on social media, you know great things are happening on the book front. We’ve been sharing glimpses of some of the illustrations created for the stories by our eight young authors - the visuals are stunning. We are so lucky to have the talented Paloma Marinheira volunteer to design these images for us. She also recently shared why she got involved in this project and how you can too. Check out her short quick video about her involvement and why we need your support. 

We have less than two weeks to meet our fundraising goals to not only get this book published and out in the world but also create some economic independence for our authors. This is our ONLY special project fundraising this year because of the pandemic so every little bit helps. As we head into July, we hope you will consider donating to our nonprofit and especially to our book project “More Than One Voice”. You can hear more on the book through this online chat here with board member Evette Franklin as well as tune in to a more detailed background from our director as to why we are working on this book.

In other news, we are super excited to announce our new partnership for our Blended Learning Programme with Madrasati, an amazing organization that works with the Ministry of Education and the Queen of Jordan to run programming for disadvantaged young people throughout Jordan. We will start working with them in a school close to the Syrian border running our Blended Learning Programme with both Jordanian and Syrian girls. That will be launching in September along with our partners Skateistan in South Africa and Afghanistan and our partners BestSpring in Nigeria and Foundation TOYA in Haiti.

Our Nigerian partners are pushing ahead in this difficult time of losing their director Aramide. The girls have decided to channel this loss as inspiration to push them forward to do even better and to live Aramide’s dream of being able to grow Global Girl Project within Lagos. They will be launching their large-scale community event on July 18, focused on issues related to waste management and street pollution. 

We are always extremely proud to highlight the amazing things that our graduates are doing around the world in continuing their journey as leaders and community shifters and changers. One of our 2018 graduates who is from Kathmandu, Nepal has acquired a job creating care packages for those that are less fortunate and affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Way to go!

 So, you know the plan of action now. Head straight to this link here and donate. If you cannot donate, then share. Either way, we are immensely appreciative of your support.

Much gratitude,
Julia Lynch, Founding Director.

It's been a week of celebration and a week of sadness at GGP

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.

Help us to share the true stories of girls of all different ethnicities! Donate!

Take a look at our cover and first chapter here!

Now, more than ever, the power of telling the true stories of girls of varying ethnicities is vital to the quest towards racial and gender equality around the world. Global Girl is proud to share with you a collection of inspiring and mobilising stories of leadership directly from our girls themselves! Our first-time authors have shared some of their most personal stories in the aim to inspire you towards creating your own community change, and we need your donations to bring this important piece of work into fruition.

With your support we will not only be able to publish our book, but we will also be able to create some economic independence for our authors as they will receive a percentage of the profits from each book sale. Due to this global pandemic, our girls are amongst some of the most adversely affected and so we want to find a way to financially support their growth, as well as allow us to provide even more innovative programming for the many other girls around the world who need our work.

Give whatever you can and share our work far and wide!! Thank you!

This is where we stand and this is how we are taking action!

At GGP, we believe  in the importance of voice and action. We work with our girls globally to create practices that enrich our collective humanity. During these difficult times, GGP stands by the BLM movement and its aim in achieving a world free of racism. Freedom is a constant struggle and through our work we can remove barriers and create social change. For us at GGP, such freedoms begin with our girls who envisage a world with a shared justice for all. 

Through our Blended Learning Program we hope we can continue to connect girls from different backgrounds together with the goal of learning from each other. In celebrating their similarities and their differences our network of girls will mobilize each other towards creating systemic change.

At GGP we know that we all must speak out and step up in order for us to see true change.

Our first GGP book - Check out our cover!!

Want to show your support for celebrating the stories of girls from all different ethnicities? We are launching our fundraiser on Tuesday June 16 for our book. The book. The one we’ve been talking about all this time. Check out our amazing front cover – just a little teaser to give you an idea of all the stories inside. Some of our girls are sharing their stories and writing about their life experiences in this way for the first time. We hope you will choose to show them your encouragement and help with the fundraiser once it's live! Book sales will enable us to create some economic independence for them and help them with future endeavors.

The work continues….

In Pakistan one of our 2019 scholars is trying to find other ways to give her time to help others.

 Of course, we are pleased as punch that one of our exchange students from 2019 has really absorbed what she learned during our five-week training and is looking for ways to volunteer locally in Pakistan and possibly with international organizations that work with people who live in poverty. Think you can help? Reach out to us here.

Meanwhile, watch out for the announcement on our fundraising campaign going live June 16!  

Much gratitude,
Julia Lynch, Founding Director.

Global Girl is Expanding into Afghanistan and South Africa...and so much more!!!

Global Girl is expanding into Afghanistan and South Africa!!!

Hello friends, hope you’ve been well! 

The big announcement that we want to share with you is our new partnership with the award-winning international NGO Skateistan - an innovative organization that runs skateboarding and life skills educational programs in Afghanistan, South Africa and Cambodia. We will be partnering with them to launch our Blended Learning Leadership Initiative in September/October, with both their South African team and their Afghani teams. We look forward to this being a long-term partnership toward the mobilization of young women in these countries. Go check out their award-winning short film Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) – it won both a BAFTA and an Oscar. We also have a new partnership with an organization in Jordan in the works so stay tuned for our updates on that as well.

Another big one for us – we met with the Girls’ Schools Association in the UK and are exploring ways that we can partner with them to offer some leadership programming within school programs in the UK, that focus on community development leadership and fundraising for GGP programming. Additionally, we have been accepted into the Cisco matching program so we can work with Cisco employees around some fundraising for our programming as well. We're grateful for their support!

We have an update on ‘The Book’ announced in our last blog post, please read here. Our young authors have finished writing their stories and we’re editing and illustrating now as we prepare for publication. We will be hosting a crowdfunding campaign starting mid-June to raise funds for us to publish this book so watch out for details. 

“This book truly has been a work of collaboration in response to the COVID-19 crisis. We knew that our girls were in isolation and lockdown in their respective countries. Often in situations with many people living in small spaces, without the luxuries of regular internet or television. The book provided a channel to engage with them and support them in this difficult time. We worked with them in writing their stories and are working for this book to create some economic independence for our authors. We can't wait to share this YA book with you. Please support the fundraiser, we will have more information to share with you on that soon.”

We are very grateful to be working with Fran Borg-Wheeler, who is doing some pro bono work with our director and our board around charity leadership management. To our supporters: you are the best. We love your enthusiasm for our work and love to hear from you with ideas for fundraising that you may want to do for us. Many of you have used your birthdays, anniversaries and other life events to create fundraisers for GGP on Facebook, we cannot thank you enough for your thoughtful gestures. 

The online fundraisers on social media are pretty easy to set up and all you have to do is choose Global Girl Project as the charity of your choice. (Here’s a helpful link with instructions if that’s been on your mind). We welcome any other creative ways that you would like to support our work and always look forward to hearing from you here on the website and on social media too. 

Much gratitude,
Julia Lynch, Founding Director.

You may not have heard....but wow, we've been busy!!!

Hello friends! Since you haven’t heard from us in a bit, here’s an update with everything that’s been going on behind the scenes. We might have been quiet, but we’ve been busy:

Firstly, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, we have had to postpone our exchange programme until May 2021 for the safety of our girls and the integrity of the programme. We want to make sure that we work with those same girls so this cohort had been postponed, not cancelled. We will be creating a new programme where we will meet with the ten girls bi-weekly from September onward to run online sessions with them. We will be looking for different guest speakers so any expression of interest in that opportunity is welcome. 

As for The Blended Learning Leadership Initiative, stay tuned. We will be announcing two new partnerships to expand this programme in September to Jordan, South Africa and Afghanistan, and continue to work with our partners in Nigeria and Haiti. With adequate funding, the plan is to be able to work with 50 girls at a time in those five different countries. We are super excited for those new partnerships and will be sharing information about that shortly.

Hot off the press! We’ve been working on a book, which we are truly elated to have had in the works over a few weeks now. It’s a Young Adults (YA) book that shares the real-life stories of some of our true global changemakers and it is truly a global effort – right from the girls who are sharing their stories to the volunteers who are assisting with the project and all of your support from all around the world. This is going to be a fundraising opportunity for the organization and to support our girls, so stay tuned for developments. We are hoping to launch that in the next few weeks as all our plans fall into place and want to have this book available to readers via schools, libraries, gift shops and other avenues. Interested in helping us or know someone who can? Tell us!

We are also thrilled to announce that we are going to be partnering with the Didcot Girls’ School in Oxford next year to work with them around some leadership activities and to be their supported charity.

We want to give a shout out to all our amazing volunteers – from those working with us on the book to those supporting our efforts. We have an amazing volunteer who is working with us to translate all of our Blended Learning materials to Farsi, Haitian Creole and Arabic. We have another fantastic volunteer who helped work with us on our taxes and financial tasks. Our director is supported by a volunteer acting as mentor on some of the strategic and organizational planning for Global Girl Project. 

Lastly, we have been meeting with our girls from previous years virtually, to keep them connected, motivated and inspired during this time and it is always heartwarming to hear from them and see how they are doing.

As you can tell, none of this is possible without collaboration and we are always happy to hear from you if you’d like to partner with us or support our efforts. Send us a note, come join us. 

Much gratitude,

Julia Lynch, Founding Director.

Pakistan May be Next Door, but this was the first time in the mountains for our girls!

Aniza and Meerab, from Pakistan, live quite close to Nepal, however, their time in the mountains surrounding Kathmandu was unlike anything they had experienced before. Take a listen.

Three Weeks of Astonishing Change and Important Revelations

We are heading into our homestretch here in Kathmandu and there have been so many changes with each of the girls!! Last week each of them got up in front of the school and introduced themselves to the students and I couldn’t believe the confidence and power that they all exuded! Especially, a couple of the ones that were so shy at the beginning that they couldn’t even look me in the eye when they spoke.

We then went on the trek for three days and I was so nervous that they wouldn’t all make it. On the first day I thought I would have to send two back home as one was wheezing like crazy and the other is so skinny that her blood sugar kept plummeting!! But with a lot of team work from the other girls, who carried their bags, and a lot of bananas and cookies, we made it to Chisopani on the first night after about 5 to 6 hours of trekking. And then on the second day we walked for about 9 hours and reached Nargokot. The girls were exhausted but elated and we had a dance party around the bonfire that night, dancing to Hindi, Nepali, and Rwandan music!! On the third day we walked for another 5 hours and ended up at the oldest Hindu temple in Nepal, which is 1800 year old!! I’ve never seen young people push themselves so much, as our girls did during this trek. Even when they fell down or were in so much pain, they kept walking! They all said that they learned that the mind is stronger than the body and that they could do anything they decided to do!!

What Three Days of Trekking Will Teach You!

This was the first time trekking for most of our girls, including Ornella and Paula, who are from Rwanda and Cameroon. Take a listen to the pearls of knowledge that they drop about what they learned during these days of exhaustion and connection.

Our First Scholars from Pakistan and they are blowing me away!!

This is our first year partnering with the NGO Seeds of Hope, from Pakistan, and we are so grateful to be able to work with them to find a way to make it possible for Meerab and Aniza to make the journey to Nepal. It is still relatively new for women to travel outside of the country alone, let alone two teenage girls, so take a listen to their thoughts thus far!!

Growth, change, challenges and it's just week number one!!

It’s been just over one week since our scholars for our 2019 Leadership Training and Cultural Exchange landed in Kathmandu, Nepal. They have been busy settling in, attending school, doing workshops, connecting with each other, exploring the city, and challenging themselves each step of the way. The growth has been real and sometimes painful, but take a listen and hear for yourself!!

An Update from Sarita, 2018 GGP Scholar Extraordinaire!!

Take a read below as Sarita tells you in her own words, what being a Global Girl means to her!

Hi Everyone, this is me, Sarita from Kathmandu, Nepal. I was the participant of Global Girl Project. From this project I learned about the leadership. This project has helped me to realize how strong girls are and that if girls want to do something, they don’t need men’s power to support them.

In my point of view, I think this is the finest project I have ever seen. This project taught us about how to address the number of social problems in our society. I am glad that I got a chance to have some place in this project. I feel proud to be called a member of Global Girl Project. I am proud that I made people in my community aware of social problems. I made my own project that was about Gender Inequality, I gave some examples about this problem and I took action on this problem in my local community. And I think I had made some change, and I am grateful to all of you and UME Design!!

Our Founding Director Talks about how to Seize the Day!!

This past month our Founding Director, Julia Lynch, had the opportunity to meet with Natalie Miller-Snell and be featured on her podcast, Seize the Day. Together they had a candid, inspiring, and honest talk about how to make the most out of each and every opportunity, even when they don’t seem like an opportunity at the time. They talk about how Global Girl Project came to be and what impact we have had thus far. It’s an inspiring and motivating conversation that is most certainly worth a sit down with a cup of tea. Enjoy!!!

Founding Director, Julia Lynch, in her boat with her dog Lua.

Week 5 - So Much Learned....So sad to say Goodbye

As our 2018 program came to an end our scholars felt many mixed emotions.  From excitement to see their family and friends again, so sadness over having to say goodbye to their new Global Girl family.  It was a challenging week, but it was full of gratitude and learning.  Take a listen to what each of our scholars shared about what lessons they will take home with them to their own communities.  The rest of the video is on it's way!

Week 4 and So Much More!!

This week we had our friends from UME Design here to teach our girls how to make their very own magazine! The girls work very hard to be creative and express each of their community action projects into the final project of the Global Girl Project HERZine!!  They were so so excited to see the finished product and it is really amazing!! The PDF of the Zine will be available as a Perk during our upcoming Indiegogo fundraising campaign that will be launched September 18th.  Stay Tuned!! 

Week 3 - 8 Teenagers in the Mountains...and So Many Leeches!!

Fourteen years ago I went on my first trek, 11 days in the Annapurna Region of the Himalayas in Nepal.  I would classify these two weeks as one of the most transformative moments in my lifetime.  I am blessed to have experienced many, but my time in the Himalayas taught me about the transformative power of being pushed well beyond our perceived physical and mental limitations.  It was here, in one of the most beautiful places on earth, that I learned that I can do absolutely anything I choose to do.....I just need to make the choice.

It is for this reason that I knew that I needed to take our 8 aspiring young leaders on their own journey into the mountains and help to introduce them to an even stronger version of themselves. Well the experiment worked.....not without many tears, screams of fear, and downright protests to take one more step up the mountain.

Take a listen here to what they learned about themselves during this journey of growth and you will be humbled (especially near the end), at who they grew into in only three days!! Thank you to Himalaya King Trekking (www.himalayaking.com) and Kathmandu Gear for helping me make this trip a reality!!

Week 2 - I think we have finally settled in!!!

This week our scholars tell you about what they have learned about themselves this week.  Personal reflection is still a challenge for them, but it is a very necessary skill if we are to work with other people.

This week was a very busy one, with the girls going to regular classes with their peers, where they seemed to be much more settled in and making good friends.  This week the girls also completed three more of our Global Girl Leadership workshops and by the end of the week each of them had decided on their individual community development projects!! Stay tuned to hear more about what they will be doing to change their communities when they get back home!!

Lastly, this week we held a group discussion workshop with the year 9 and 10 girls from our partner school and the discussions blew me away! They talked about gender stereotypes, about how they are viewed as impure when they have their periods, and so many other very important topics.  We ended the week by volunteering a local orphanage by helping them to clean their new home!! I was so proud of each of our scholars for working really hard to make a difference!!

Take a listen straight through to the end, if you need a little heart warming....

Week One is Done and Gone....and Oh What a Week it Was!!!!!

Take a listen to our 8 2018 Scholars share with us what was their most favorite thing that we did last week and what they learned about themselves along the way.  Tune in every week for an update from our girls and see their transformation and growth right in front of your eyes.