While we were running our Global Girls Run the World fundraising campaign recently, we also launched a new offering, and it’s a big deal for us, so read on...
One of the overwhelming things we hear from our girls when we meet and talk with them is that they want more–they have a thirst to learn more from GGP about leadership, running their own initiatives, teaching other girls, and staying connected to each other. We hear that they want to keep having conversations with each other and learning more from each other about each other’s countries as well.
In response to that, we worked with an amazing volunteer named Richard Wall who helped us create a new online platform called Global Graduates Connect. This platform is now accessible to every girl who has graduated through our programming and as we move forward, each girl that graduates from any of our programming will be added to this platform. It will house different modules for networking, leadership, education, career, healthy sexuality, health, relationships, and learning about life for girls in other parts of the world.
This is something that exists now but the intention with this platform is that it’s a living organism and that it’s going to grow with our girls. The intention is that we have girls who will become interns for us and will help us create some of the content because what we found is we want content that is by girls and women, for girls and women, from the countries we work in, but those resources are extremely limited and, in some cases, don’t even exist. So, in true Global Girl style, we needed to create some of these resources, and who better to create them than our girls who are living those experiences! We are going to work with some of them as interns in the future to be able to create those resources and teach other girls.
There are a lot of opportunities here for us to run live webinars, conferences, and from the beginning, this is also a movement for us to get our girls online. In a recent meeting with Google, we heard that there is a lot being done about getting women in developing countries online but there is very little being done about getting girls from developing countries online and so that is one of our missions when we are focusing on mobilization. In 2021, that means the use of the internet and it’s not just about our girls not having access to technology or data or an internet connection, but it’s also about our girls having to deal with some of the societal stigmas around girls using the internet or cultural norms where there doesn’t appear to be a need for girls to get online. Most of our girls don’t even have their own email addresses so we are hoping to shift a lot of those paradigms through our partners and with our girls because if they are going to be members of our global community in 2021 and beyond, they are going to need to be able to know how to use the internet, write an email, log into a platform, and communicate in this digital way. And that’s part of the work that we are doing through Global Graduates Connect.
We are super excited to be able to launch this platform and will have more updates for you over the next few months!
With much gratitude,
Julia Lynch.