Give to Girls All Over the World.

If you have visited this blog before, you are familiar with LitWorld's work in empowering young women in countries such as Kenya, Iraq, Ghana, Liberia, and in various locations in the U.S.

This Holiday season, we have decided to engage our international community in a gift that lasts a lifetime:  launching five new Girls Clubs sites throughout the world. LitWorld Girls Clubs for literacy provides mentoring, literacy & leadership workshops, health & safety information, and lessons on female empowerment & the importance of education to girls in vulnerable communities. We equip these young women to become literacy leaders, thus allowing them to be more self-sufficient, educated, and empowered.

Please visit our Global Giving page on how you can give your gift to girls , and please tell your friends to pass the word along. You can also watch our video below, and go to this link for more information!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVR0Mix201Y&fs=1&hl=en_US]

"What We Care About" Part 2 (Accra Ghana)

Here are photos of the letters the Girls in Ghana wrote. Though they are thousands of miles away from our New York office, it seems we can sense and feel the warmth of their smiles through these pieces.

Thank you for sending these over, Madison!

Photos: Hello from Girls Club in Accra, Ghana

Girls Club Leader, Madison Graboyes, shares her reflections and photos abroad in Accra, Ghana: 

I think sometimes it is easy to forget that we never stop learning.  Coming into this Girls Club experience, I was knew I would have a fantastic experience, and I hoped to teach girls valuable tools and life lessons.  I’m starting to realize just how many life lessons they are teaching me.

The class I taught before our last Girls Club session was a difficult one, and I left the room exasperated.  I felt overwhelmed, both by my inability to get my students attention, and by the negative reinforcement being thrown at children constantly.  Sometimes trying to make a small change in an environment can seem like an uphill battle.  When I walked into the girls’ classroom, however, everything was different.  It felt like a breath of fresh air.  All 12 young women were so excited to get started, that any stress I had felt instantly melted away.   These children want to learn so badly, and they soak up positive reinforcement like a sponge.  It is all about the approach.



We began our Girls Club this week with a poem.  When I asked the girls what a poem was, I was met with blank stares: none of the girls had ever hear the word poem, let alone read one.  I was momentarily heartbroken by the idea of not knowing poetry for the first 12 years of my life – I can’t claim to be a poetry aficionado, but certain rhymes carried me through those years, and I can’t imagine living without them.  I read the girls their first poem, and then asked if they would like to write their own.  It was a resounding yes!


The week before, I had asked the girls to go home and write a little blurb about their dreams for the future.  This is what we used for our first poem together, our Dream poem.  Each girl came to the board and wrote one line from her dreams for the future.  In the end, we had a beautiful piece filled with love and big dreams!



Our Dream Poem by the girls of Ghana’s Girls Club
I dream one day all girls will read
I dream that I will go to the USA
I dream about becoming a doctor
I would like to be rich
I dream that I will become a lawyer
I dream one day I will become a doctor
I dream one day to become a newscaster
I dream that I will become a model
I dream one day that I will be a police in my future
I dream that I will be a nurse
I dream that I will be a teacher
I dream that I will become a policewoman
I dream that all girls will be virgins and also that I will be a journalist in the future



Read and See more by clicking the link here...

First Girls Club Meeting in Accra, Ghana!

Our Girls Club Leader in Accra, Ghana, Madison Graboyes, has written us to let us know how the project is going overseas. Take a look at her blog entry to see what she's been up to! Thank you for all your work, Madison!


It's time to begin my first LitWorld Girls Club in Ghana!  I was so excited to get this project started, and it felt like such a long time coming since I have been here for two months trying to find a venue for the program.  Finally Ghanaian schools started, and with that, so too could my Girls Club.  I went into my English Language class (the one I had yesterday) and called all the girls to bring their notebooks and come with me.  My supplies were pretty limited (aka none, not even a classroom) so I took the girls into a vacant cinderblock shell of a school building next door.  We sat on the ground - stressful as the girls did not want to get their skirts dirty - and I began to explain who I was, who LitWorld was, and what this special time we were going to have every Thursday was.  It was slow going at first, so I tried a name game.