Youth Taking Action: Empowering Girls Globally

by James Bach

Published February 18, 2009 @ 09:32AM PT

Sejal Hathi in Kolkata with Girls for Girls (via IMOW)

What global impact can a 17-year-old social entrepreneur make? Lots! Take Youth Venture's Sejal Hathi as an example. Still in high school, she runs Girls Helping Girls, an international organization that empowers girls around the world to transform their lives. Her organization has engaged thousands of girls in more than a dozen countries and raised more than $30,000. How does she do it? We spoke to Sejal about her brand of girl power and what inspires her as a social entrepreneur.

1) What is the focus of your project or organization?

Girls Helping Girls is an international NPO that empowers girls to transform their world by mobilizing them to Eradicate Poverty, Increase Access to Education, Improve Health, and Promote Peace. GHG' first initiative, Empower-a-Girl, is a grassroots sister-team program that partners girls in the US with those in developing countries to collaborate through cultural exchange, education, and social change projects to achieve major global goals. Our second, The Sisters 4 Peace Network, is a social change platform and community that provides girls the one-on-one mentorship through a family of successful girl entrepreneurs, the resources, the toolkits, and the support network to launch and sustain their own initiatives or advocate and micro lend for existing ones.

2) What has your project accomplished and where do you see it going?

In the past year and a half, we have mobilized and engaged over 5,000 girls to collaboratively create social change, training girls from more than 15 different countries to launch their own social change projects, create micro lending projects that loan funds directly to struggling women entrepreneurs, speak up about self-respect, construct holistic education programs for sex-trafficking victims, learn about global issues, and engage in cultural exchange. We have also raised over $30,000 to invest directly in girls' initiative by funding their pursuit of education, the construction of schools and libraries, their basic needs like food and water, and social change workshops that educate hundreds of deserving but impoverished girls around the world. We aspire to continue to blossom and amplify this movement by engaging thousands of more girls to get involved; eventually, we hope especially to attract business corporations to sponsor a cause or a program-for example, our education for sex-trafficking victims program or our micro lending initiative- each month as we raise awareness for the cause, to build business and nonprofit plan generators through our Sisters 4 Peace Network, and to establish an official Youth Social Entrepreneurship Month both first in the U.S. and hopefully eventually internationally to raise awareness and galvanize action among more girls and youth.

3) Who or what inspired you to start this social venture? Is your source of inspiration the same today as it was when you started?

One of my deepest passions has been my commitment to the organization Girls for a Change, which helps girls like me to identify local challenges and implement creative solutions under women coaches. Three years working with GFC on an action team and on the National Board always inspired me that any girl, however disadvantaged, could leverage her inner power to make change. However, the more I campaigned and led, the more I painfully realized that most of the girls in the world do not even have the awareness and the knowledge to define their own mission, and to transform their passions into action. These realizations finally culminated when I was 14, as I performed a project to raise awareness and funds for a women's and children's group in Darfur; my work and contact with those whom the project was aiding showed me the vast chasm between girls like me and those in developing countries without the resources or support network to become leaders for change. It was through this experience that I determined to muster my experiences to establish an organization that empowers aspiring girls like those I encountered from Darfur to fulfill their dreams by making a difference.

4) What has contributed most to your success?

I would have to say persistence: there have been so many hurdles, and so many discouragements, especially because I am a youth who began to build this organization during perhaps the most difficult time of my high school career: the transition from sophomore to junior year. Nevertheless, I never yielded to the skeptics or the dissenters or the arrantly incredulous because I knew that it was my promise-no, my duty-to leverage the skills and gifts and privileges with which I had been blessed to empower the potential of the millions of girls across the globe without a support network. Without a doubt, I would never have been able to mature GHG to our present extent without the constant support of my family, of Youth Venture, and my other mentors.

5) What has been your biggest challenge, what did you do or are you doing to overcome it?

It is always difficult to, as a high school student, juggle all of my school responsibilities with my passion and commitment to Girls Helping Girls. It is doubly difficult because I and my team are operating an international nonprofit that aims to bridge cultures and meld together diverse and eclectic backgrounds to forge a common humanity: coordination and communication are both key priorities and hefty issues. Oftentimes, being youth, it is furthermore taxing for us to convince potential donors and partners of our legitimacy or sustainability, yet eventually we tend to succeed, because our sincerity radiates through our work. With Youth Venture's guidance, I have sought the advice, support, and mentorship of several adults to help me surmount these challenges, and continually work with all of our partners to share best practices and implement more efficacious and versatile programs and opportunities and methods of communication.

6) What is the most important lesson you've learned from your work as a social entrepreneur?

The power of people, of a team and of networking are one of the most significant lessons I have gained since founding Girls Helping Girls: without a team to focus on specific aspects of an organization, like fundraising or website development or outreach or internal development, it is nearly impossible to craft and evolve a dynamic and holistically successful program. One person cannot accomplish everything, and a cohesive team of dedicated and responsible individuals is an indispensable ingredient to transitioning from idea to implementation, and then from birth to sustainable growth. Yet even after a team is assembled, I have learned that we should always be reaching out to potential partners, supporters, and sponsors to continue to raise awareness about our cause and ensure its relevance and significance to the public: exposure is crucial, and a web of reliable and supportive and inspiring contacts is certainly no trifling advantage to augmenting wider involvement and staying afloat, especially in these meager economic times.

7) Why should youth get involved in creating social change?

More than 40 percent of the global population is young people aged 24 and younger, and more than half of this population is located in the developing world. And when poverty, economic crisis, HIV/AIDS strike, it is youth who are most vehemently and irrevocably injured; as from being the first to be ejected from employment and contract HIV/AIDS, to helplessly and haplessly perpetuating the cycle of poverty through illiteracy, drugs, and abuse, youth are suffering and are not being heard or consulted.

Yet it is youth who possess the most innovative and unique perspectives and ideas on how to solve these problems, for they perceive them with more idealism and creativity than adults. Youth connected in the community and have access to multiple networks. Youth have more time on their side, are flexible, and can nurture knowledge and experience and work to change perceptions; they can mobilize quickly, especially using novel technology. Because youth are such a critical population sector, youth activism and engagement is indispensable to creating holistic social change.

8) What advice would you give to aspiring social entrepreneurs or current leaders?

Yes we can. In those timeless words, so exquisitely epitomized by our nation's recent presidential election and embodied throughout our history, you must seize your own potential and realize that anyone can make a difference. Every day, through your actions and choices, every moment, you are already changing the globe: you are the change that you wish to see in the world already-everyone is-and all you must do is channel your reflections, your talents and passions into something even greater. Perhaps the most important step is to find a mentor and join a community of people invested in social change and committed to giving back, from whom you can learn and with whom you can exchange ideas: Ashoka-and Youth Venture if you are a young person-are phenomenal networks to find these resources. I would also highly recommend, if you are a woman or a girl, joining Girls Helping Girls' Sisters 4 Peace Network for resources and mentorship in getting started. Ultimately, know that if you believe in yourself, if you confide in a better future, you will create that future: be humble and yet exude confidence in your abilities and the world's potential to change for the better, and you will create a whole new realm of possibility.

Get to know other young social entrepreneurs by reading their stories and seeing videos of them in action at http://genvcampaigns.org/

If you are a young person between the ages of 12-20 and want to create positive change in your community enter your idea in a campaign or join the global movement of young changemakers at http://genv.net/