Global Girls Run The World: International Women's Day, Fundraising Update, and Hear From a Fundraiser

It’s Day 7 of our month of movement and already many of you are showing #whoruntheworld. 1 week since we started GGRTW 2022 and we’ve managed to raise £5,758 already.

You can also see our progress between our partner countries as the kilometres are ticking up. We passed through Haiti at the weekend and are now on our way to South Africa!

What an encouragement and thanks to everyone who has signed up and is moving and raising money to support our leadership programmes in South Africa, Cambodia, Haiti, India and more.

IWD 2022 IS TOMORROW

It’s International Women’s Day tomorrow and we have set a target of raising £1,000 on March 8th, funding 10 educational grants, ensuring continued education for 10 graduates from the Global Girl Project Blended Learning Leadership Initiative.

So we’re asking you to do something special:

·       RISE UP & MOVE for an hour – it’s a great way to start the day! Take a sweaty selfie & post it on social media (don’t forget to use the hashtags #globalgirlsruntheworld #whoruntheworld #iwd)

·       NOMINATE 6 friends who inspire you and ask them to do the same (in your post). We want to multiply our impact today.

·       GIVE £6 (or more) to Global Girl Project via our IWD Chuffed fundraising page. This will mean that the benefit from your hour of movement lasts longer than a day. We want to make lasting change.

WHY I GIVE

We asked one of our fundraisers to share why they have signed up to GGRTW and this is what they said:

“Watching with increasing horror the events unfolding in the Ukraine over the past week I felt really helpless. What can I do faced with such seemingly unstoppable violence?

Well – as the perfect antidote to feeling helpless, the month long virtual race supporting Global Girl Project appeared in my feed and I grabbed hold like it was a life-jacket of hope.

I’ve always used running as a stress reliever and now each step I take as I jog round my muddy local park will be helping to raise money to send girls in Cambodia or India to school with funded education grants.

I run and ask people to sponsor me, because it’s something I can do, to make a difference.  I would like to encourage you to sign up today and you can be part of Global Girls Run The World this March.”

Five Great Ideas for Your Global Girls Run The World Team

Our team fundraising page for Global Girls Run The World is now live! The race starts 1st March so you have just under two weeks to gather your team, sign up, and get fundraising!

If you want to get involved but aren’t sure how, here are some ideas for who your team could be:

• Get your company involved, set up a company team and compete against others, or what about a little intra-office competition with multiple teams within your organisation

• Get your kids to set up their own teams, and maybe compete against each other for a bit of healthy competition.

• Get your kids schools involved, they could set up a whole school team, a great opportunity for community building and learning!

• How about reaching out to your neighbours and setting up a neighbourhood or postcode team, a great way to meet more people in your area

• Are you part of a sports team or gym? Why not team build by all taking part together 

What are you waiting for? Get your team together and head to https://www.globalgirlproject.org/the-race-is-on to find out more and sign up!

Global Girls Run The World IS BACK. The Race Is On!

Last year, we ran our hugely successful Global Girls Run The World campaign, encouraging collective movement all over the world to support Global Girl Project. Now it’s back! 

This March we run an epic collective virtual race of 50,000km around the world. These virtual kilometers represent the journeys between the Global Girl Project’s partner countries.

Global Girls Run The World is all about:

• Connection: be a part of a team and join a wider collective all moving for good 

• Care: caring for yourself by being more active and giving yourself time to move

• Change: making global change by supporting the work of Global Girl Project by helping us reach our fundraising goal of £50,000!

What will you do with £50,000?

We have big plans for 2022! We want to see more than 300 girls be mobilised through our innovative leadership programming and making community and global change. We are expanding our programming to new countries and going into Peru for the first time, we are revisiting our work in Afghanistan, we are building a new and improved online learning platform for our graduates, and we are working on a whole new virtual leadership and cultural exchange program for our girls. 

What was it like last year?

Last year we raised £30,890, and this year we want to make even more impact! Through your donations last year we were able to make our Founding Director a full-time employee, hire our first external position, our Programme Manager Hannah, expand our Blended Learning Leadership Initiative to five more locations, and launch our innovative Global Graduates Connect platform! Check out our story highlights on Instagram @globalgirlproject to see more about last year.

It looks amazing, what do I do next?

• Go to our fundraising page at Chuffed.org, create your own fundraising page, and share it with friends and family!

• Get moving any way you like (running, walking, cycling, skiing, skateboarding, swimming, hot air ballooning…) keep a track of your miles and share your progress with us on social media #globalgirlsruntheworld

• Follow us on social media to track our collective progress around the world

• Join us for an online celebration event on Friday, 1 April

How else can I support Global Girl Project?

If you can’t take part in the race, you can cheer us on, share the word, and donate to others who are racing. You can also sign up to be a monthly donor and become a Global Changemaker, or shop at our store.

What does it mean to be a feminist organisation?

At the start of January we shared on social media our New Year’s intention as an organisation, not our aims, strategies or goals, but who we want to be. A kind of self-improvement but for our organisation. 

It was: become an example as a feminist organisation, and continue exploring what that means for us, our leadership, our team, our partnerships, our funding, and our work. 

What is a feminist organisation?

A feminist organisation is one which works for a gender-equal society. Fundamentally, feminism is about all genders having equal rights, opportunities, and protections. Our feminism and our work is intersectional, which means acknowledging that different forms of discrimination interact and intersect, for example, a woman of colour may have a different experience and different needs from a white woman. According to Terry Mizrahi, feminist values focus primarily on equal rights and opportunity for women while recognising the goal of empowerment. Specific values and ideologies have traditionally been adopted by feminist organisations which make them distinct from other organisations and these include the interconnectedness of problems and solutions while recognising that personal problems have political, cultural, and historical causes and solutions. Feminist organisations value creating a more democratic and egalitarian society by engaging in "the personal is political" and "sisterhood is global" ideologies. (fn1)

What else is a feminist organisation?

For us, being a feminist organisation is not just about the work we do externally to us, it’s also about how we run our organisation internally. Action Aid’s 10 Feminist Leadership principles is certainly a good start for explaining what this might look like. 

Action Aid’s 10 Principles of Feminist Leadership

For us, we want to prioritise these principles in our leadership and team working. This means prioritising collaboration and coalition building rather than competition; power-sharing rather than aiming to be the most powerful party in a partnership or space; self-care rather than burnout as a badge of honour; and respect for the differences and needs of different people, rather than a one-size fits all approach.

What does this mean for us?

As we go into 2022, we are continuing to think about what this means for us. Some of the questions we are considering include:

• What does truly sharing power with our partners look like?

• What does feminist corporate sponsorship look like?

• Would a four-day week help promote self-care and caring for others more effectively?

• How can we create truly open spaces where staff at all levels feel their opinion is valued?

• How do our policies support or undermine our feminist values?

We are learning and developing, and in the spirit of courage, collaboration, and accountability, we look forward to sharing this journey with you. 

Share your thoughts in the comments. 

Footnote 1: From Benita Bunjun , “Feminist Organizations and Intersectionality: Contesting Hegemonic Feminism”, Atlantis, Vol. 34 No. 2 (2010): Across the Generations in Women's Studies.

Global Girl Project 2021 Round Up!

What a year it has been! 

It has been a challenging year, amidst Covid-19 and political unrest, and we at Global Girl Project are grateful to have been able to continue our work all over the world. It’s been a year of growth and development for Global Girl Project: we are embarking on the writing of our very first official Annual Report which will be released at the end of February 2022 and will provide much more detail on the year that was, but to wrap up our final week in the office before we have some rest and relaxation with our loved ones we wanted to review some of the key excitements from the year.

• First corporate sponsorship with the Jordan Kuwait Bank

• We ran our most successful fundraiser ever, Global Girls Run the World, raising £31,000!

• We were able to make our Founding Director an official full-time employee of the organisation. 

• We started working in Jordan and India

• We launched our new Ambassador Partner Programme, the brainchild of Vanessa Boag, welcoming 15 senior level business women to our global team.

• We welcomed on two new board members

• We welcomed our second employee, our Programme Manager Hannah White-Steele,  who joined Julia to make it two!

• We launched a new round of the Blended Learning with 6 new facilitators at one time: and they all did an amazing job!

• We started our work adapting our curriculum to make it safe to go back and work in Afghanistan after our programming had to stop due to the Taliban takeover. 

• We began work on our new Global Graduates Connect Platform, providing a safe space for the girls to learn and connect to each other to continue their leadership journey

• We started development of our exciting new Global Virtual Exchange programme, the next level of leadership learning and an innovative approach to an exchange programme.

• We won our first ever award, the Global Changemaker Award and will work with DesignIt to create a truly innovative online platform for our girls. 

• We received sponsorship from Instructure/Canvas to help us improve our online programme delivery.

All this and more in our forthcoming Annual Report. We are grateful for everything we have been able to achieve this year, and look forward to diving head first into the new year, when we return to the office on the 4th January. 

Happy holidays from all of us at Global Girl Project!

Putting your money where your mouth is: the problem with NGO funding and doing it differently

As a not-for-profit, much of our energy has to go into fundraising in order to sustain the work we do. As anyone who has worked in the charity or NGO sector, or indeed anyone who has tried to raise money at all, knows, this is a challenging and time consuming process. We look for funding which is aligned to our values, and will allow us to work in the way that we know we need to, which is often quite different from traditional development. As we grapple with the joys and challenges of running a small organisation, dedicated to working differently, and continue to search for funding for it, other structural and systemic challenges continue to rear their heads. 

Funding Requirements

Part of what makes us able to do the work we do is our small team and agile approach to work. We often hear from donors who claim to want to support smaller, grassroots charities, but in reality their bureaucratic or application requirements are too great and represent a barrier to access: they might want bigger budgets, more audited finances, or more developed evaluation systems. Donors who say they want to support smaller organisations need to actually adapt their processes and requirements to enable those organisations to apply and be successful.  

Lack of funding for women’s and feminist organisations

A second barrier is the availability of funding for gender-equality organisations which are women-led, particularly those led by women of colour, and feminist. Despite upticks in gender equality funding the latest figures show that only 1.3% of gender equality funding goes to women’s organisations. Of gender equality funding. We are an all woman team, we were founded by a woman, all our staff, board and facilitators are women. We live and breathe feminist values in our organisation and we know that this helps our work be even more impactful, but when it comes to funding, it’s a barrier.

Lack of funding for organisations led by women of colour

In addition to this our founder and the majority of our team are women of colour, which comprises an additional structural barrier. Research shows that organisations led by people of colour, and particularly women of colour received less funding with more strings than those led by white people. According to a report by Bridgespan and Echoing Green, who looked at Echoing Green’s applicant pool, on average the revenues of the black-led organisations were 24 percent smaller than those of their white-led counterparts. The report continues:

“When it comes to the holy grail of financial support—unrestricted funding—the picture is even bleaker. The unrestricted net assets of the black-led organisations are 76 percent smaller than their white-led counterparts. The stark disparity in unrestricted assets is particularly startling, as such funding often represents a proxy for trust.”

Funding Structures

Funding for the NGO space is often dominated by funds who give based on their own priorities and desires. The power is where the money is, so a top-down aid approach can continue to serve the powerful. In development studies you constantly hear stories of the donor that wanted to build a shiny new hospital rather than fund community health care or local nurses (because everyone wants to say they built a shiny new hospital) only to see that hospital unused, inaccessible or unstaffed. Development money often doesn’t communicate or work effectively with the populations they claim to serve. The What Went Wrong? project on Failed Aid found “a consistent failure to clearly communicate the status of aid projects to members of the communities where they were being implemented.” We work differently to this; we work in close local partnership and at the core of our organisation is the belief that solutions to the most pressing social issues and global challenges will come from within, and much development funding is not willing to fund such a decentralised approach.

We are doing work which needs to be done, in the way our partners say it needs to be done, but we are up against huge structural barriers which need to be addressed before we can see the equality donors claim they support. 

What we have learnt about the power of Global South to Global South exchange

Look for youth exchange programmes and most likely what you’ll find are programmes for those in the Global North, or Global North-Global South exchanges. While of course there is value in these experiences, what is much less common is Global South-Global South exchanges. 

In this blog, we use Global South to refer to countries which may previously have been referred to as ‘developing’ countries or those in the ‘Third World’. Global South to Global South exchange involves young women from Global South countries connecting with those from other Global South countries, with whom they share a huge amount in common with. This is as opposed to connecting with young people from the Global North (for example Europe or the United States) as would be the case in more common Global South-Global North exchanges.

One of the unique elements of our programming and one of the ways we are doing development differently is the Global South to Global South exchange it facilitates. 

In recent weeks we have been bringing together groups from Haiti, Jordan, South Africa, India, and Cambodia to meet each other as part of our Blended Learning Leadership Initiative, and they have been sessions full of joy, learning, and excitement as the girls learn more about each other, their cultures, and themselves. 

So what have we learnt about the power of Global South to Global South cultural exchange:

• Our girls have much more in common than they realise, and meeting other girls from all over the world with experiences they can relate to makes them feel more powerful, more important, and more connected. Often girls in Global South countries may not be exposed to realities outside of their own, and what they do see may be of Western communities, e.g. on TV. Our girls may think they are the only ones dealing with some of the challenges they face (for example early marriage or access to education). Connecting with other girls who have similar experiences makes them feel less isolated and that they are not alone. 

• Our girls are learning about cultures and countries they might not even have known existed. We can all agree that exposure to different cultures is a positive and powerful thing. Our girls are having the opportunity to learn about places they might not even have known existed, from people who live and are from those places, and who they can strongly relate to. 

• Our girls are so inspired and excited by meeting each other and want to continue the connection. After meeting other girls as part of the programme, our girls always want to continue their connection, building a powerful sisterhood of girls all over the world.

• Technology makes cross-cultural communication accessible to our girls in ways it never was before. Before, if we wanted to speak to someone in a language that wasn’t our own, we’d need to learn that language or spend a lot of time with a dictionary. Most of our girls do not speak English and there is no common language between multiple groups. Google Translate and other technology means our girls can communicate between Haitian Creole and Arabic, or Urdu and Khmer, opening up a whole new world of possibilities. What’s more, many of our girls have not experienced or used Google Translate before, so by introducing them to it we are giving them a powerful new tool to use to leverage their international networks.

Through all these experiences, our girls learn that they are not isolated, they are not alone, and there are women and girls like them all over the world working to make change. Isolation is a powerful tool for those in power seeking to exercise control and maintain the status quo. Our girls have the opportunity to see new realities from what they might have experienced so far, and see the potential and power of themselves and their sisters all over the world. 

Seeing the impact of these interactions for our girls, we’d love to see more Global South to Global South exchange opportunities for girls and others, and are looking forward to seeing the change that the power of this connection can go on to make in our world. 

Want to help us do this for more girls? Become a Global Changemaker and donate monthly. Or get in touch with info@globalgirlproject.org to talk about other ways you can support us.  

“They can learn how to make change, and they know they have the power”: Reflections from Haiti

In our blog this week we are hearing from our longest serving Blended Learning Leadership Initiative (BLLI) facilitator, Clyfane Saintil in Haiti. Clyfane has delivered the BLLI five times, and shares here her thoughts about why it’s so important for Haiti, the impact on the girls, and leadership in challenging times. We are so grateful to Clyfane and all our powerful facilitators around the world who make amazing things happen, often in very challenging circumstances - you are the strong female role models our girls need, and an inspiration to us all. 

Clyfane has been working with our Haiti partner Fondation TOYA since 2017, and in 2019 was selected to be the facilitator for the first cohort of the Blended Learning Leadership Initiative, run in partnership with Global Girl Project. Clyfane is clear about the challenges that Haiti faces: “we don’t have a government, there are kidnappings, and violence in the street… it is a difficult place for young girls.” Because we aim to work with the most marginalised girls, who are often those disproportionately affected by these challenges, Clyfane is often having to adapt the programme and plans to the reality in Haiti. However, Haiti is so much more than these challenges. The picture Clyfane paints of the dynamism, vibrancy, enthusiasm and power of the girls she works with is the other story, less heard but more important, and the BLLI plays a central role in unlocking this.

Our girls in Haiti

Confidence and consciousness as powerful girls

The programme is focused on leadership, but more than that, it is about developing confidence and engagement for the girls. Talking about the development she sees in the girls she says that often when they come for the first time to the BLLI they are shy, but after a few sessions she sees them grow: “they are sharing their ideas, and they can express themselves better. When they start [the programme] they say they would prefer to be a boy because as a girl they feel they don’t have the ability to do certain things. By Session 3 or 4 they have learnt that they have power, and that as girls they can do whatever they want.”

The value of finding their voice and realising their power is something which comes up again and again: Clyfane notes that the education the girls receive does not teach them to argue, to think critically, to use their voice, but on this programme they learn how to do these things. She says that before and after the programme the girls “think and talk differently. They are conscious as a girl, and they know they have a responsibility to teach other girls, to show people that they can make change even in a hard situation. They know ‘we have to change something, we have to do this, even if we are young girls.’”

Our girls in Haiti join a call to connect with girls in other countries. They attended the session despite a fuel strike making travel challenging.

The meaning of leadership and the value of connection

At Global Girl Project, we are all about mobilising socially minded leaders for community-led change, but what is leadership for Clyfane and the girls in Haiti? “Leadership is talking about how we can manage a situation which is bad, how to help someone grow, how to support people to do great things, giving people hope. Leadership is learning about each other, learning about a situation, learning about the people in your life. Leadership is helping others.” 

If leadership is about supporting others, it’s also about learning from them and getting inspired. Clyfane says that one of the most powerful things about the programme is that “the girls see girls around the world doing different things, and they know that they can do the same.” Connection to other girls all over the world, the inspiration that they draw from them, and the confidence they get from the programme is unique. We couldn’t put it better from Clyfane when she finishes by saying: 

“The BLLI is not just a programme to teach the girls how to be a leader or do a community event - it’s also a family, because they have found a way to have hope, they have found a way where they can feel good and confident as a girl, they can learn how to make change, and they know they have the power.” 

Confident, powerful girls are what we’re all about. We can’t wait to see how our girls in Haiti and all over change the world. 

Want to get involved in having this amazing impact all over the world? Become a Global Changemaker and donate monthly or get in touch to find out how: info@globalgirlproject.org.

Supporter Spotlight: Running a Marathon for Global Girl Project

This week in our blog we highlight one of our amazing supporters Grace Biddulph who ran a marathon to raise money for Global Girl Project! Grace raised an amazing £1320 running the Loch Ness Marathon in Scotland. Here we find out a bit more about why she did it, why she loves Global Girl Project, and what leadership means to her.

How did you first hear about Global Girl Project, what is your connection to us?

I met Julia [our Founding Director] at a training workshop which is when I first heard all about Global Girl Project, and then I volunteered for the charity for a while. 

Why did you choose to fundraise for Global Girl Project?

Because I think it's an authentic grassroots charity that is really trying (and succeeding!) to change the lives of girls globally. I have strong faith that every penny raised will be put to good use. Plus I'm a big feminist at heart, so anything working towards gender equality is good in my eyes! 

Can you tell us a bit about the race you did, and how was it for you? 

I am by no means an experienced runner, this was actually my first race over 10k. But I've always enjoyed running and the sense of freedom it gives. Lockdown was the perfect opportunity to progress my running so I decided to sign up whilst in the depth of the second lockdown. My friend had some great advice - run a marathon in a place you want to go to! - and I've been wanting to go to Scotland for a while! 

Grace ran 26.4 miles in aid of Global Girl Project

Why do you think Global Girl Project's work is important, and what do you like most about the work we do?

Because girls have the potential to change the world, but often aren't afforded the resources or encouragement that allows them to do so. The thing I like most about Global Girl Project is its adaptability and global reach. It's amazing how many countries it's working in. 

What would you say to someone considering supporting Global Girl Project?

Stop considering and start raising! 

What does leadership mean to you?

Positive influencing to change for good. A good leader should result in motivation for change. 

Anything else you'd like to share?

It turns out 26.4 miles is actually QUITE far... but worth every penny and would do it all again. 

A huge thank you from everyone at Global Girl Project for Grace’s amazing effort: your 26.4 miles will help us ensure we can keep doing the work we do.

Inspired by Grace? Want to fundraise for us? Got a great idea? Get in touch at info@globalgirlproject.org. 

Becoming a social changemaker: a journey of learning and reflection

At Global Girl Project we are led by the expertise of our partners and the needs of our girls. When we mobilise girls through our leadership training we don’t tell them what they need to change, we think they know best. We encourage them to look at their community and think about what they love, what they know could be improved, and what they want to do about it. 

In a special blog for International Day of the Girl, we explore some of what we are hearing from our girls in Jordan, Cambodia, and India. 

There is so much for the girls to love about their communities, even if they might not have thought about it before! All over the world, the girls talk about loving the supportiveness and unity of their communities, and the fact that people help each other. In Hyderabad, India, our girls highlighted the togetherness of their community, for example, when there was flooding and people lost their homes, other community members provided them with shelter and food. In Cambodia, the girls also love the unity of their community, and feel proud of the kindness people show each other, and in Jordan the co-operation across the community makes the girls feel safe and supported. 

As in all communities, there are things our girls identified as challenges. For many of our girls educational opportunities are an area where they want to see improvement. In India, they identify there being not enough educational institutions close by, and so girls are forced to drop out as their parents may not want to send them far from home. In Cambodia, our girls also feel there is not always a commitment to ensuring girls finish their education, often due to financial issues or to valuing the education of boys more than girls. In Jordan, the girls highlighted the patriarchal nature of society which in this context can lead to girls’ education not being valued and girls missing out on educational opportunities. 

After only three sessions on the Blended Learning Leadership Programme, our girls are starting to see a clear and vital role for themselves in being a part of the social change they think is required; they are leaders, even if they don’t yet recognise it. Asma Unnisa, who runs the Blended Learning Leadership Initiative in Hyderabad said: “when we were having discussions about the role of a leader or the qualities of a leader, I had to dig a lot to go through their lives and understand their thinking about what it means to be a leader… But I came to know that almost all the girls are doing something that may be very small but it is definitely making social change… I was so happy to see the faces of all the girls after realising that they are a social change maker.” 

In Jordan, Dua’a Alshami, the BLLI facilitator in Irbid said “my girls’ role so far is to have a vision and carry the message in order to start with the path to the change… When I first started working with the girls, they were reluctant to criticize their society thinking that they were wrong not to accept it. So far, the girls started to open their eyes and see that it’s ok to contemplate the community we live in and what changes need to be made in order to have better living circumstances for the people, especially girls and they’re now taking advantage of this project and showing responsibility towards acquiring what is needed to become better leaders and pursue their vision.” 

In Cambodia, Sina Long from our partner Skateistan Cambodia, said “I feel like our girls can make a huge impact in their community when they are given an opportunity. They can be young leaders who can make the change that they want to see. I am proud that our girls are able to stay up with their education despite their disadvantaged background. More importantly they strive for any opportunities that allow them to be well equipped and initiate the change. Global Girl Project, for example, has given them an opportunity to define and shape them to be young leaders who can make a difference in their community.” 

All our girls are on a journey to being social changemakers, as they learn more about their communities and how they can be leaders for social good. We can’t wait to see where they go and the change they create along the way!   

Exploring the link between leadership, technology, and social change

Last week our Founding Director Julia Lynch spoke at the Unite 2030 Youth SDG Summit alongside Global Girl Graduates Isata George (from Sierra Leone) and Sajeda Alheet (from Jordan). Julia, Isata, and Sajeda explored the important links between leadership, social change, and technology. In case you missed it, we are sharing some of the key insights from the session here:

• For many, the shift online that has happened as a result of Covid-19 has been an opportunity for more inclusion, because it’s enabled people to get involved in things outside of their immediate location. However, for the girls we work with, it has often served to exclude because technology can be challenging to use and to access. For example, the platform the Summit was through had 11 steps to register. If you are digitally literate it might feel like 3 or 4, but for our girls, this can be overwhelming and incredibly challenging.

• The challenges marginalised girls face might not be what you think. Access to a phone or internet is important, but often the barrier can be practice and confidence in using technology. As a result, we are continuing to adapt our programs to find more ways that girls can get experience and practice with technology through our programs. For example, Sajeda said that "If I hadn't done the leadership learning online, I wouldn't have felt confident to do this panel today". This is why exposure to technology, and opportunities to practice with it, are so important.

• We are a small organisation and so need the big tech players to get involved and hear from our girls the challenges they face so we can solve these.

• We are looking at how we can reach communities who are even more isolated, and being online presents an amazing opportunity here. Our work in Afghanistan is one example of this as we are looking at how we can deliver completely online in a way that is safe for the girls.

• Sajeda and Isata were so keen to connect after Global Girl Project - they knew they were missing out by not being connected, and it’s so important we give them the opportunity to be. We know marginalised girls have important things to say, and we need to make sure they are able to share it.

2020 has taught us that we cannot divorce leadership learning from digital literacy, and we need to continue to work to enable girls to feel confident online. Only by doing this can we ensure the inclusion that Covid-19 has brought to some, is felt by everyone.

Become a Global Changemaker: A New Way to Support Girls’ Leadership and Social Change

It’s an exciting time at Global Girl Project! Last week as well as launching a new round of our Blended Learning Leadership Initiative (you can read more about it in last week’s blog) we also launched our Global Changemaker Campaign!

Over the past 18 months during the upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us have had the time to step back and reflect on the things which are important to us and on the kind of life and world we want to see. If you want to be a part of enabling more female- and community-led social change and do your bit to make a difference in our world, this is for you!

We have launched the Global Changemakers as a community of monthly donors - a group of individuals, families and groups who are mobilized and working for social change - a growing network of supporters that mirrors the growing network of Global Girl Scholars and Graduates. Part of what makes our girls so powerful is the fact they feel they are part of something bigger: they connect to each other, support each other, and use their network for good. We wanted to bring that power of community and sense of connection to our supporters who make the work our girls are doing possible. 

As a small organisation who received no government funding we are reliant on monthly support from people like you who understand the importance of mobilising girls and enabling socially minded and feminist leadership. Our monthly donors ARE our recurring income!

In order to join just sign up to make a regular donation to Global Girl Project using the donorbox form on this webpage. As an inclusive charity we ask for no minimum donation to become a GLOBAL CHANGEMAKER, and encourage you to give what you can to support this vital work. Gifts can be monthly, quarterly or annually as is most convenient.

Thank you.

Leadership Learning in the Digital World: 80 Girls Start Their Journey

What’s happening this week?

We are seeing the start of a leadership journey for eighty girls, all of whom have the power to change our world. Our Blended Learning Leadership Initiative is launching again in five countries and eight locations! Read on to find out more about this programme and why we believe girls can change the world.

What does “Blended Learning'' mean and why do you use this approach?

Blended Learning is an approach which combines online learning with classroom interaction, bringing the best of both approaches together for a more impactful learning experience. We developed the Blended Learning Leadership Initiative as a way of expanding our reach to even more organisations and girls. Our in-person Exchange Programme was incredibly popular, but was limited to a small number of girls who could benefit and we wanted to expand our impact. We wanted to take the best parts of the Exchange Programme and together with our partners design something which would, by virtue of being partly online, reach many more girls.

How does it actually work?

We hire and train facilitators from our partner organisations, who deliver partially online content to groups of 10 girls in a particular location. The facilitators access an online course, which guides them through the delivery of 11 sessions of expertly designed leadership and community development content. Our partners are local organisations who are deeply embedded in the communities they serve: the programme is delivered in the girls’ local language and is flexible enough to be adapted to the local context (we always love hearing about adaptations facilitators have made to the programme). Our partners are the heart and soul of our work, we are partner-led and strive to build genuine and equal partnerships built on respect and deep listening.

So, what do the girls actually do?

The facilitators guide the girls through a journey of learning about community development, social change movements, leadership, and finding and using your own personal voice. As part of the programme, the girls run their very own event on a topic which impacts their community. This might be on child marriage, menstrual health, domestic violence, traditional gender roles, but it will always be chosen by the girls as something important to them and their community. By the end of the programme the girls have experienced project development and planning, practiced leadership skills, and interacted with the other Blended Learning Leadership groups from all over the world.

Girls in Gujarat, India start the Blended Learning Leadership Programme led by their facilitator Asma

What impact does this have?

Our ultimate goal is to see female- and community-led change making a difference to social issues. By mobilising girls to be leaders in their communities we see impact on a number of levels. At a personal level we see the girls build their skills, their self-confidence, and their self-esteem. At a community level we see the impact of the work the girls do, we see people engaging with the issues that affect girls and women, and we see community members seeing that girls can lead for the first time. In the longer term girls who are mobilised for social change become leaders and innovators working to change the world and make it a better and more equal place for us all.

Where are your partners working at the moment?

Our partners are currently working in Haiti, South Africa, Jordan, India, and Cambodia.

How do I get involved?

If you are an organisation working in a developing country with girls living in poverty aged 13-18, you can apply to be a Blended Learning Leadership Initiative delivery partner. Email info@globalgirlproject.org for more info.

If you want to support our work you can become a regular donor here

If you want to find out more about our work you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn here.

If you want to volunteer for us, please get in touch with info@globalgirlproject.org.

Taking big next steps with the support of Instructure

You probably already know that at Global Girl Project we mobilise girls to be leaders and make social change. We support girls to build their leadership capacity, we empower them to make community change, and we enable them to connect to other likeminded girls. You also probably already know that we do this through our Blended Learning Leadership Initiative, our Global Graduates Connect platform, and our Exchange programme.

What you might not know, is how we actually do it. The answer is: in large part, thanks to Instructure. We use Instructure’s flagship Learning Management System Canvas to run all our programmes. It helps us manage our content in a simple and accessible way, and can be used by all our facilitation partners and girls to access the content relevant to them.

As a small organisation we have, until now, been using the free version of Canvas. However, we are thrilled to announce that we are now being sponsored by Instructure, who are providing us with their full version of Canvas!

This is an incredibly exciting development for us: it will enable us to continue to improve our two existing programmes (Blended Learning and Global Graduates Connect) and to develop our new Global Virtual Exchange programme. With new functionality and support from Instructure, we can take our girls’ learning to the next level, we can work with more girls, and we can continue to build the digital literacy of the girls we work with, enabling them to be effective leaders in the digital and post-Covid age.

Thank you to Instructure for believing in our girls, and helping them to change our world.

Changing our world starts with (getting a) girl (on Canvas!)

Recognizing our regular donors!

As a grassroots organization without any government assistance and only a few small foundation grants, we at Global Girl Project rely almost entirely on the support of our regular donors. And today, we wanted to share a little more recognizing their contribution to our organization. 

The GGP monthly donor program was started by our founder about four years ago. On a flight back from Sierra Leone to Los Angeles, after interviewing girls for the next exchange program, she happened to strike a conversation with a fellow passenger who also ran her own charity. 

We learned that a regular donor program enabled them to cover her salary so she could focus on her work and then fundraise for the rest of the associated costs. And that’s how our recurring donor program found its start. 

We have 50 beautiful souls who believe in our mission and cheer us on with their giving on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. They have provided us with the stability that we need to be able to plan, just like any business does, in terms of what we can offer. 

That we can cover the salaries of both our full-time director and part time program manager so they can then focus on the work of fundraising for our efforts. It is really through the generosity of our global changemakers that we were able to continue with our growth over this last year. 

We will soon be searching for more people to become part of our recurring donor program (and have a campaign launching in September so stay tuned for more details on that!) but we wanted to give a shoutout on the blog today to those who have been with us through it all.

To all our regular donors and supporters from the beginning of GGP and to everyone who joined us along the way to where we are now: Your encouragement means the world to us. Our girls truly benefit from your kindness and for that we are immensely grateful.

Much gratitude,

Julia Lynch, Founding Director

What does resilience mean to you?

We ask, because the worlds that our girls live in and where we have programming can sometimes test that exact part of you. What do you do when things are not going well? Some of our groups of girls right now are such a true example of what it means to be resilient.

 In Afghanistan, our girls are dealing with a very scary situation right now with Taliban occupation of the majority of the country. They are having to deal with relocating to different areas so they can be safe, and we have had to put our programming on hold so we can ensure their safety. This is, of course, in consultation with our partners there, but our girls are ready and excited to get started and back to work as soon as they are able. The situation appears unmanageable, but they are ready to push forward and will take no excuses. 

In Haiti, our girls have dealt with the assassination of their president and there was worry of civil war breaking out. But our girls have been so brave and persistent. They are going to be running their community event next weekend right after the president’s funeral because they recognize that what they are doing is important. We couldn’t be prouder of them and their resolve to continue with their efforts.

And in India, our girls are still in the middle of what’s happening with the pandemic but are still meeting every week online, trying to find somewhere quiet to partake in the sessions in a home that is full of siblings and grandparents and other family members, or a spot outside even in the middle of the heavy monsoon season right now. They managed to get together for the first time in person recently and are excited to be planning their event on gender discrimination which they will be running in a few short weeks because they know this is going to be life changing. 

These are just some examples of how our girls push forward in such a multilayered time of challenge and we want you to see their strength and recognize that they choose to persevere no matter the odds. What we are doing here at Global Girl Project isn’t easy or some sort of feel-good gesture. It is what needs to happen because our girls live in worlds where there is so much that they can’t control. There are times that there is a real fear for their own safety and livelihoods. And yet they are the epitome of resilience. 

These are the girls you help us reach with our training programs and we want you to know their stories of strength and determination.

Much gratitude,

Julia Lynch, Founding Director

We'd Like to Introduce you to........

This past year has been all about creating opportunity out of challenges, both for Global Girl and for the world at large. We have had so many firsts over the last year. Our first book, our first leadership event, our first global race, our first time working in Afghanistan, Jordan, Cambodia, South Africa…..and NOW our first time being able to hire someone to come and work for Global Girl Project!!!!

We teach our girls how to take calculated risks, how to push the boundaries and so we are doing the same by hiring a 6-month contracted Programme Manager to support myself as the director and to help us grow to the next level.

So please meet the incomporable Hannah White!

Hannah has worked in youth empowerment and youth leadership development, network building, and the gender equality space, and has extensive experience in facilitation and coaching with young people, partnership development, program management, and organisational development. Hannah brings with her years of experience working within multiple developing countries within the leadership development field.

We feel beyond fortunate to be in the space to be able to bring on someone who can both support me, while working to grow our programming to the next level, enabling us to impact the lives of hundreds of more girls globally. Our ability to be able to offer this 6-month contract is largely due to the success of our Global Girls Run the World fundraiser and to the support and donations of all of those that made it such a success. This is a perfect example of how the collective can work together to create immediate and impactful change. Thank you to you as our supporter and welcome to the family Hannah!

With Gratitude,

Julia.

We have a new corporate sponsorship in Jordan!

Our update this week is short and sweet but no less thrilling! You read right - GGP is expanding further into Jordan. We have just secured our first corporate sponsorship with the Jordan Kuwait Bank, and we are delighted to be working with them.

Our ambassador Britt Burnett helped make this connection. The Bank has agreed to sponsor expansion into two more locations in Jordan for September. That’s a total of three locations where GGP programming will take place.

That’s 30 girls every three months vs. only 10. We couldn’t be more excited to have more young girls around the world join our beautiful family.  The Bank will also be offering internships for our girls and providing resources for our new Global Graduates Connect platform.

That way we can have culturally relevant information on careers and related topics for our girls to benefit from. We are simply over the moon about this new partnership and hope it’s the beginning of a long and fruitful association. 

If you know any organizations that we can partner with then please send us information on the contact form here. We appreciate every opportunity to collaborate and connect!

Much gratitude,

Julia Lynch, Founding Director

What do Global Girls Really Want?

Well, besides world domination, community change and female empowerment (and the list doesn’t stop there!), our girls really want to connect.

With not just each other and their communities but also with girls around the world, just like them. We found that holds especially true with the graduates of our programs. 

So, we did it. We created Global Graduates Connect (GGC) – an e-learning and community platform where graduates of Global Girl Project can build their leadership skills and collaborate with others to change the world beyond the programs we offer. 

We created this platform because we saw our girls wanting to have meaningful conversations with each other and continuing to learn about each other’s cultures, languages, and religions, but also, to challenge each other to be leaders and change makers in their own communities.

Sure, this is a pilot project and a work in progress, but we’ve been blown away by the excitement with which our girls have engaged on the platform already.

One of our girls from Sierra Leone has lived in a village all her life, without phone or internet. She finally moved to the capital, Freetown, and the first thing she did was get a phone and reconnect with the founding director to say she wanted in on GGC. She was in our exchange program three years ago and has been wanting to connect with other girls from the program since. It took us weeks to help her with creating an email address and getting her access but here we are – she is now on GGC and interacting with others. That’s just one story!

All our girls, from Nigeria to Rwanda, Nepal to Afghanistan, are all talking to each other about really important issues in their communities like child marriage while also learning about their traditional food and dress – the conversations are simply fascinating. 

It all goes to show, what we all desire is to connect with each other and at Global Girl Project one of our missions is to create a network of change makers and young female leaders around the developing world. With GGC, that’s what we are doing. 

PS – feel free to connect with us if you’d like to volunteer or learn more about collaborating on any of our ventures.

 Much gratitude,

Julia Lynch, Founding Director

We Are Hiring!!

And here’s why that’s news – for the first time in the history of our organization we are in a position where we can hire externally and bring somebody new to our team to support the work of our founding director. We could not be more excited to add another member to the GGP family that, along with our fabulous volunteers, supporters, event staff, and well-wishers everywhere, will help take us to that next level and reach more girls around the world with our training programs.

Head to the link here for more information, but here are a few details:

The Programme Manager will be the second ever member of staff to work at GGP - joining our Founding Director at an exciting time of growth for our small and dynamic international charity. You will play a critical role in supporting our day-to-day programming, working with established content as well as curating further resources and materials for both current and new programmes. In addition, you will be ready to jump in to support the Founding Director with the operations of the organisation - whatever they may be!

This position is a part-time, 6-month contract position and the candidate will be considered self-employed. We anticipate this role to work a 24 hour/3-day work week - the right candidate will be able to work flexibly to support global partners, which may include early mornings, evenings or weekends.  

Pay rate: £28,000 pro rata to 24 hrs/week (£18,000 annually)

Still interested? See the full job description here and apply!

We are looking for an innovator, somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit, who is excited about working outside the box, and pushing the boundaries of the development field. 

This isn’t an entry level position; we are looking for someone who is experienced enough to really be a part of something impactful, so if you know somebody then send them our way or share the job posting link with friends and on social media. Maybe we will get to work with someone cool that you introduced us to!

With gratitude,

 Julia Lynch

Founding Director