Girls Rising for International Women’s Day
This Friday is International Women’s Day and on Thursday night, the national release of the film Girl Rising will be in theaters across the United States. We’ll be joining thousands of people to watch the stories of nine girls achieving their dreams against incredible odds.
The film shines a spotlight on the impact of girls’ education to end extreme poverty. We’ve seen the story come true many times in Firelight’s 13 years of grantmaking to African grassroots groups. Our work to support programs for girls is supported by the Nike Foundation and the Girl Effect and that’s allowed us to deepen our impact through grants and training on the issues unique to girls. Seeing the issues girls face in communities grappling with poverty receive this celebrity level of attention is just what the issue deserves. It’s exciting to watch the screening in a room with hundreds of others who care about this issue in our own community of Santa Cruz.
Later this year, we’ll take the film to our African partners so girls living through many of the experiences we see in the film can show it in their communities. We’re planning to load the film on iPads and bring it to our grantee partners along with some prerecorded video responses to the film to show the girls how people responded here. Stay tuned for responses from both the Bay area and East Africa on our website.
The international release of Girl Rising is scheduled for October 11, 2013, which is the second annual International Day of the Girl.
If you’re in Santa Cruz, we have two follow-up events to the screening that we’d love you to join.
On March 8th, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day with another international nonprofit, Rising International, from 6 – 8 pm at VinoCruz, 725 Front Street, Santa Cruz. Stop in and say a quick hi or stick around for a while. One note, VinoCruz is a 21 and over shop.
On March 19th from 6:00 – 8:00 pm, we’re hosting a discussion on the issue of girls’ education in communities of extreme poverty with our on-staff education expert Kristen Molyneaux and a representative from Rising International at our offices. Everyone is invited to attend this event and the more the merrier so please RSVP here.
You can still get a ticket to Girl Rising in Santa Cruz and many other places. So jump online and show your support for girls and girls’ education. Afterwards, ask yourself what you can do to help. Here’s one idea…you can like Firelight’s Facebook page and share updates about our work with your peers or start a conversation on the page! There are other great organizations working on this issue too, maybe there’s one in your community. The issues girls face are not going to go away unless we do something about it so go ahead and start by getting your tickets here: http://gathr.us/films/Girl-Rising
Watch the Girl Rising Trailer here: http://bit.ly/YoZERX