I am so excited to start my internship on the Girl Up Programs & Impact team!

Background: Girl Up was launched by the UN Foundation in 2010 as a “youth-centered leadership development initiative working to achieve gender equity worldwide.” The organization is committed to “supporting young leaders in their passionate action for social change” and seeking “feedback from our global community to ensure accountability in maintaining our values.” Their mission is to “develop, mobilize, and activate a powerful generation of girl changemakers who advance gender equality.” **Girl Up works to help girls internationally broaden their social impact skill sets, becoming leaders, advocates, and activists in the movement for gender equality today. Through leadership programming and impact development, Girl Up girls have inspired substantial legislative change, including federal policy in the U.S.

My Project: I am working with Girl Up’s Programs & Impact team as they plan and execute the 2022 Girl Up Leadership Summit, which will take place virtually in mid-July.

I’ve been assigned to two Workshops – I will be the lead operational coordinator for a youth-led workshop discussing gender-based violence and supporting an expert-led workshop on Web3.0 during the Summit. The workshops involve educational presentations, skills-building, expert panels, and Q&A opportunities. As the Workshops are designed to improve the leadership skills of attendees, they focusing on increasing each participant as a Leader of Self, Leader of Peers, and Leader of Change.

Alongside my contributions to Summit preparation, I’m creating a concept note for a professional development curriculum for college students who are the alumni of high school Girl Up clubs.

I’m also working on developing a passion project, part of the Girl Up internship experience – stay tuned to see what this entails! I hope to incorporate my interest in quantifying and measuring social impact into Girl Up’s programming work, ideally using the data they collect through their current Monitoring & Evaluation practices.

It has been wonderful to meet everyone on the team this week, and I am excited for the work to come!