Help Global Sorority to Expand our Reach

 I want to tell you a story about a little girl one Christmas long ago.

 Imagine if you will that it’s snowing outside! This little girl is ten, soon to be eleven, her family has no money this Christmas.  And to be clear about “no money” all seven of them have survived on $8,000 dollars this whole year with no other assistance.

Usually by this time they would be gone from the cabin in the woods, but this year they’ve decided to stay until after Christmas. These winter days are short in the woods, the sun seems to set even sooner behind the tall pine trees.

The anticipation and secretism in the house is building as everyone tries to work on each other’s handmade surprise gifts, but trying not to be seen. They all have to say things like “I’m coming into the living room now” only to receive synchronized shouts of No!" 

It's time to go and harvest a Christmas tree! The little girl walks through the woods with her family and their dogs and the cat, (the cat goes for family walks too) They select a beautiful crooked tree from a thicket that needs thinning and they drag it home, leaving a wide sweeping track in the snow along with their footprints.

Their cheeks and hands are burning from the cold but the fireplace is roaring inside as they put up the tree and hang their handmade decorations.

This year they have near to nothing! And by nothing I mean nothing but love and creativity, family, music, home-grown food, nature, and Christmas magic. So really they have everything they need! Despite how we could perceive a lack of abundance through another lens.

Yes that little girl was me, I still remember the gifts my parents made for me that year. And it stands out as one of my most special family memories. 

The life of that little girl living off the grid in the woods is so far removed from where I am today, but those years growing up shaped my perception of what true abundance really means. 

This year has been an amazing blessing for our little organization, with so many little girls lives that have been altered by your contributions. 

Our cofounder Loretta and our filmographer Andrea just returned from a trip to the frozen North West territories to work with native youth in a remote village called Fort Liard. Look it up on a map! They didn’t even have a road to access it by until the 1980’s!

This community is also desperately poor but to listen to what the kids chose to do for their community contribution projects will melt your heart.

Studies show that the key to happiness and a long life are deeply tied to our sense of purpose in life, and we have seen that children are also drastically effected by having or not having a sense of value and purpose.

I interview Loretta about this GS trip, and the transformations that the kids experienced. We also get to see the cute puppy that she pulled out of a frozen dirt hole and brought home with her. Check out the video interview here. https://youtu.be/xoINSvb-_nk

Happy New year to you! We hope that you had a holiday season to remember and may your life be blessed with an abundance of love, purpose and meaning in 2017

Links:

• video interview with GS cofounder about NW territories
• our website

Hello, Or should I say Dia dhaoibh!

pronounced (JEE-uh DEE-iv) That's gaelic, meaning “God to you.”

I’m just flying back from Ireland today, which happens to be my home country when I'm not here in the US and it happens to be one of the first places that Global Sorority officially started working with young women and shared their unique experience with the world through the documentary series.

During that first year of Globalal Sorority's commig together we decided to set out on a quest to find out what girls around the world really needed, from- themselves, their communities and us the world, to truly succeed.

If we were going to pour our lives and donate every minute of our free time to this idea of empowering girls through leadership and self-development education, then we needed to find out if this indeed was what they and the world needed.

That first year and first documentary segment captured the lives and voices of girls from Ireland, Italy, Uganda, and India.

Having taught and filmed in many more countries since then, the susutainability of our work comes back to our ability to fundraise for, and share this work with girls and young women here in the U.S.

This fall our lead facilitator and our filmographer will be facing sub zero temperatures as they work with indigenous youth in the Northwest Territories of Canada and later this year we will be working with the women and girls of the Lokota people in north Dekota. This will bring us to the end of our research and filming, but the EOS leadership education component will continue with your help.

We’ve found that nothing works to shift a young woman’s future development and outcome as much as gaining internal leadership skills and the self-realization of her innate value to her community and the world.

So even if some of our girls in the developing world don’t go on to higher education (which many have!) They still have a much better chance of managing and creating a life that’s in alignment with who they are and which respects their value.

Touching base with the communities and young women we have worked with in the past is important to us because long-term progress and continued support is the direction that we are moving towards. 

Checking in with my Irish girls was very rewarding and amazing to see how they have grown. They are rippling out and effecting the world in positive ways. They are now going into law, engineering, speech and language therapy, and the list goes on.

Staying connected with all of the young women we’ve worked with who are spread across the world will take building a strong and robust online education platform so that girls from the USwho have gone through the trainng can connect, learn from and share in leadership development with sisters from accross the globe! And our other major goal is to set up safe spaces for girls in communities that are disadvantaged so they can continue to learn and grow.

Our first GS continued education center will be in Bangalore India. This will cost about $700 a month to rent space, hire staff and serve the girls and young women of the Vivek Negar slum. 

This is our mission for 2017 and I hope that you will join us on this journey to change lives from the inside out and change communities with the help of empowered female leaders who know their value to the world?

Thank you for all you do!