This Week We Want to Share with You How Strong Our Girls Truly Are!

To celebrate International Day of the Girl Child, GGP interviewed girls who have participated in our programmes to understand what motivates them. Another wonderful contribution from one of our Girls, who provides her perspectives on community leadership, and the power of mothers in motivating and supporting young girls in education.

1.    Where are you from? 

 I am from Pakistan

 2.    What was your community development project about?

 In our community people are in the view that girls are not for education and that studies is just a waste of time and money so they do not allow girls to study. Girls are in the difficulties of poor situations that’s why I started a project for uneducated girls. In this project I inspired their parents for their education.

 3.    What do you think makes a good leader?

 In my view, a good leader should report a girls performance every day, notice a carelessness in their performance and next time give them guidance to improve their performance. 

 4.    What is the hardest thing about being a girl today?

 In my view of knowledge I think the most difficult thing in the modern world of 21st century is getting education for girls because of their poverty and in most houses parents care about boys education and not girls education. 

 5.    What motivates you to do community work?

 My mother encourages my project!

 6.    Who do you think is a good leader? What do you like about them?

 Mothers are the best leaders in our lives especially for girls when a one educated women will birth an educated nation.

 7.    What are your biggest hopes for your future?

 My mother is a brighter sign of my future, she has a great desire for me and I hope one day she will be able to bright my future.

 8.    If you could give 3 tips to a young girl growing up, what would they be?

 If I give 3 advice to her. First of all she should make a proper time table of any thing like time for work and time for study. 2nd, she should get advice from her elders and 3rd, she should follow time table, discipline and guidance from learners. 

In Celebration of International Day of the Girl...we celebrate our girls!

To celebrate International Day of the Girl Child, GGP interviewed girls who have participated in our programmes to understand what motivates them. Here, we chat with a GGP girl from Nepal about her perspectives on all things leadership!

1.    Where are you from? 

 I am from Nepal

 2.    What was your community development project about?

 My community development project was ‘Gender Inequality.’

 3.    What do you think makes a good leader?

 Integrity Honesty and clarity makes a good leader!

 4.    What is the hardest thing about being a girl today?

 The hardest thing about being a girl leader today is overcoming the expectations, the world has and doesn’t have for you. They expect a smart, beautiful young lady who can clean and cook. 

 5.    What motivates you to do community work?

 The work we do in our community leads to a positive change. This helps me do community work!

 6.    Who do you think is a good leader? What do you like about them?

 The thing I like about leaders is that they made hard decisions and self sacrifice in order to enhance the lives of other people around them. 

 7.    What are your biggest hopes for your future?

 My biggest hopes for my future is the positive change that leads to a supportive community.

 8.    If you could give 3 tips to a young girl growing up, what would they be?

 The three tips I would like to give a young girl is to stay strong, think twice before you take a step and never hesitate to make a right decision. Never let anyone take you down. 

Time for another update already? Days fly by here at the GGP HQ!

We are less than a month away from fully launching our Blended Learning Leadership Initiative and we are super excited for everyone we will be welcoming to the program this time around. We met this week with our new program facilitators from Jordan, Afghanistan and South Africa to prepare them to run the program in their regions. We're going to be working with 10 girls in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, 10 girls in Johannesburg, South Africa and 10 girls in Karak, Jordan, as well as 10 girls in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and 10 girls in Lagos, Nigeria. That’s a whopping 50 girls who will be starting with GGP this September. We are simply thrilled to have them all join us and we are grateful to both Skateistan and Madrasati for our new partnerships.

Our new Program Facilitators from Skateistan and Madrasati.

We are working around the clock to try and make adjustments to our program. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, our girls in places like Johannesburg may not be able to meet in person so we're looking at ways to work with our partners to provide the resources necessary to do this 100% online. We're working with our partners in Jordan around a new school schedule that's being set by their government in preparation for a possible second wave of the COVID-19 virus. We're really being put to the test to be as flexible and adaptable as possible, and we’re prepared to rise to that challenge. It’s something that we want to teach our girls here, too.

Meanwhile, here are a couple more amazing illustrations from our upcoming book “More Than One Voice”, which is currently with the typesetter as we speak being readied for publication at the beginning of October. Major gratitude and a huge shout out to our volunteers who we are going to highlight a bit more later - Max, Camila, Kate, Paloma and Ruksana, who have been working day and night to bring this project to fruition. We can't wait for you to meet our inspiring girls and read their stories. Watch out for the announcement so you can get your copy online – we will have physical copies and e-book versions. For our fundraising donors that supported our recent book campaign, if you chose the book as a perk, you are going to love receiving it.

Andddd drum roll for our next major announcement please! We’ve got a global digital leadership summit in the works and we want you to be a part of it. Scheduled for mid-November this year, we are looking for people from all over the world who would be interested in possibly speaking, leading a workshop, or collaborating in any other way. Send us your ideas, thoughts, suggestions, we are all ears for what you’d like to see from this summit. Simply head to our Contact Page right here and let us know.

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.

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.