By Amie Williams | Executive Director
Greetings generous donors!
I am writing this from London, where GlobalGirl Media just won the With And For Girls Award! Together with 20 organizations from around the world, we are honored to accept a major cash prize as well as capacity building support and mentorship as we grow our vision to reach more girls! You, our individual donors are now joining a coalition of major global donors working in the girls' empowerment space, led by the Stars Foundation, but also including the EMPower Foundation, Global Fund for Children, Nike Foundation, Mama Cash, NoVo Foundation and Plan UK. This funding will be focused on building out a major distribution plan and portal, strengthening existing projects and staffing.
I am dancing in the streets in London, along with our newest London Program Director, Tor Bridges!
As you know, most of 2016 was filled with work related to our #GIRLSGOVERN Program, which we outlined in our last report.
We are happy to say it was a major success! Our program elements included a webinar and online toolkit, an online VIDEO CONTEST, asking girls to send a message to the next President, online voting on our very own #GIRLSGOVERN BILL OF RIGHTS, co-sponsored by the Bella Absug Leadership Institute, MINI-TRAININGS in three swing states, Wisconsin, Colorado and New Hampshire and our crescendo event, the #GIRLSGOVERN TOWN HALL, convening 280 women and girls at George Washington University on Sept. 14th.
Over 210 girls voted online to choose the issues they felt were the most pressing to their generation, and we presented these on stage for the first time as our #GIRLSGOVERN Bill of Rights.
We also interspersed the top 5 contest finalist videos to spur dialogue and set the stage for the panel discussions. The journalists who participated were: Anna Therese Day (Vice, Huff Post, CNN and others), Kathy Kiely of Bill Moyers, and Soraya Chemaly were outstanding as mentors and senior moderators, working with GGM and the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute junior reporters who were the primary moderators of the 3 panels.
We were ecstatic that we were able to get a representative from Hillary for America (Rachel Vogelstein) as well as from The White House (Tina Tchen) and the House of Representatives (Carolyn Maloney), though on the day of the event, the latter two had to bow out due to circumstances impacting the First Lady’s schedule and the House holding a closed combined vote. Our keynote speakers included Hillary for America’s Rachel Volgelstein, Ashlee Wilson Hawn (entrepreneur and activist known for her fight against the Tampon Tax and creation of Red Cycle, a home delivery monthly tampon club insuring that women and girls get access to affordable feminine hygiene products) Vice News journalist Anna Therese Day, sharing tales from the field, Allyson Carpenter, DC’s youngest elected district official, and Madison Kimrey, a 16-year-old activist. Each brought down the house in different ways and engaged in photos with the girls as well. Ashlee held an impromptu Q & A session after her speech and did selfies with the entire audience.
TEDWOMEN, SAN FRANCISCO and Tedx Women, London
We also had two GlobalGirl Reporters, Kamogelo Mabizela from South Africa and Lali Waldiboar read out loud on stage our GirlsGovern BILL OF RIGHTS MANFIESTO at the TedWomen 2016 gathering. It was part of the Evening Community Event, and over 300 people were in the audience. Amie also live streamed the reading on our FaceBook channel.
A few days later two GlobalGirl Reporters, Aisha and Jorga read the same Bill of Rights at TedxWomen, London.
VIEW OUR READING OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS/MANIFESTO HERE
GIRL FEST 2016, San Francisco
On October 15th, we joined forces with Rise Up Together to train young women as part of the San Francisco World Wide Women’s inaugural GirlFest 2016 Event held at Fort Mason. The workshop was called “Making A Difference in the World, and focused on developing messages. It also included tips on how to best impart a message, know your audience, craft a video to educate your audience, and upload it via various social media. GGM ED Amie Williams taught two sessions of approximately 30 girls on how to use their cellphones to best shoot video content. GlobalGirl Reporter Precious Fasakin also travelled from Los Angeles to participate in the Main Stage panel: Global Girls’ Voices: Education and Vision for Girls’ Rights, hosted by the Malala Fund/SSWM and Rise UP at GirlFest. Precious spoke about the importance of equality in education within public high schools in L.A.
It's been a heady few months for us at GlobalgIrl Media, and we look forward to even more exciting news and achievements in the months to come! Thanks again to all our friends and supporters.
In gratitude and still dancing!
AMIE
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