You are never too young, too ambitious, or too rich to care about the world we live in. These five organizations have empowering missions we can all join and support.
1. Girls Opportunity Alliance
Courtesy: @d_simas Twitter
The Girls Opportunity Alliance (GOA), a program of the Obama Foundation, seeks to empower adolescent girls across the globe through education, allowing them to achieve their full potential and transform their families, communities and countries. The organization mobilizes individuals around the world to take action to help adolescent girls and the grassroots leaders working to educate them.
Former first lady, Michelle Obama, donated more than $500,000—the proceeds she derived from 2018 and 2019 merchandise sales related to her book, Becoming—to the Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund to propel the initiative.
Through her personal life journey of breaking political barriers, Obama continued to use her platform within the GOA to urge girls to resist the “imposter syndrome”, the discouraging feeling many women in positions of power face in a predominantly male domain. In an interview reported by Reuters, Obama said, “We need women and diverse minds, people who think differently and have different religious beliefs, because truth and the right answers come from diversity of experiences.”
2. The Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign
Courtesy: Vogue
The Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, founded by Meena Harris and inspired by Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” poem, is a female-powered organization that brings awareness to social causes.
By purchasing the official Phenomenal Woman t-shirt, individuals proudly show off a statement in support of women everywhere, no matter the social class, color of their skin or ethnic origin. The Phenomenal shirt also symbolizes support of the critical work that’s being done for women’s rights on the ground by fearless organizations every day. All net proceeds directly benefit non-profit partners, some of which include Families Belong Together, The Council on American Islamic Relations and Black Futures Lab.
The organization also coordinates many initiatives. For example, for the 2018 midterm elections, the #PhenomenalVoter campaign encouraged voting through social media and achieved 124.9 million impressions via celebrity ambassadors.
3. March for Our Lives
Courtesy: World Economic Reform
March For Our Lives was founded in 2018 by a fearless group of student survivors of the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Despite enduring the heartbreaking losses of 17 students and faculty members, the students quickly mobilized groups of teenagers across the nation to immediately fight back for their right to safety in a classroom environment. The organization’s mission is to harness the power of young people across the country to fight for sensible gun violence prevention policies that save lives.
4. The Cameron Boyce Foundation
Courtesy: The Cameron Boyce Foundation
The Cameron Boyce Foundation is a nonprofit organization inspired by the life legacy of Cameron Boyce, a young television actor and dancer who unfortunately passed away in July 2019. The organization provides young people with artistic and creative outlets as alternatives to violence and negativity. It utilizes resources and philanthropy for positive change in the world.
Cameron Boyce was a multitalented and multifaceted person. No one word or label could fully encapsulate who he was as a person. As such, the foundation focuses on multiple initiatives that truly honor the sentiments Cameron stood for: ending gun violence and clean water. The organization also works to bring awareness to epilepsy, the illness that took Cameron’s life.
5. WE Movement
Courtesy: Cineplex
WE is a family of initiatives comprised of WE Charity and Me to WE. WE Charity empowers people of all ages to make a difference, whether domestically or internationally, through programs like WE Schools and WE Villages. WE Charity achieves a remarkable financial efficiency, with an average of 90% of donations going directly to child-serving programs. ME to WE is an innovative social enterprise that creates socially conscious products and experiences that enable people to change lives through their everyday choices. At minimum 50% of profits are donated to WE Charity to help support its international development work.
All five of these organizations began with individuals with a vision to fix a broken system, break a stigma or reorient a standard of behavior. Taking action goes much further than simply spreading awareness. Let us use the things in the world that anger us, or motivate us, or invigorate us to join a movement of positive change.
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