This year, a group of Shorewood Intermediate School female students started a new extracurricular club called SIS Girl Up, which is an offshoot of the worldwide organization Girl Up (GU).
GU is a global movement of empowered young women leaders who defend gender equality. Through leadership development training, Girl Up gives girls the resources and platform to start a movement for social change wherever they are. GU was founded by the United Nations Foundation in 2010, and continues to work across a global community of partners to achieve gender equality worldwide. The movement has impacted the lives of more than 48,000 girls worldwide through its leadership training programs.
The purpose of the SIS GU chapter is to advocate locally for equal education, by raising awareness across the community and holding fundraisers. This spring, the group decided to focus their fundraising efforts on the Girl Up Initiative Uganda, a local young women-led NGO that aims to provide young women and girls with opportunities to succeed and thrive as leaders in their communities through holistic education and economic empowerment.
The SIS group says that they envision a world where girls can achieve their full potential through access to an education, and develop into economically independent, empowered young women capable of contributing to their families and communities as a whole.
Therefore, they came up with the fundraiser called “Fund a Flamingo” where patrons paid $10 in exchange for sponsoring a flamingo on the SIS campus front lawn.
“We think education for girls, especially those who are less fortunate, is important,” says club president Betty Murie. “We also think it is important to brighten people's day, so we thought what better way to do these both than to have people pay to put a plastic flamingo around the school, and use the proceeds to donate [to Girl Up Initiative Uganda].”
The group set a goal to raise $150 but ended up exceeding that goal and raised a grand total of $840. The money will now be donated to the charity, Give Her a Future, which will provide education to 30 Ugandan refugee girls.
For more information on the SIS Girl Up Club, visit their website: https://30530206.wixsite.com/sisgirlup