Happy Day of the Girl!

Today is the day!! Oh happy day. I’ll have a roundup of the news tomorrow, but today I’d like to share a letter from Brandi and I, the co-presidents of the NW Girls Coalition. The coalition has been busy!

Hope you enjoy!

Dear Northwest Girls Coalition Partners and Supporters,

Happy Day of the Girl! We are thrilled to celebrate girls and our girl justice community today. This year, we have the added pleasure of celebrating a Nobel Prize winner from within the ranks of our movement! We’d like to congratulate Malala Yusafzai and thank her for her tireless work on behalf of girls across the globe.

There are a lot of ways to celebrate today: Join the conversation on social media, make a gift to your favorite girl-serving organization, sign on to the Day of the Girl Proclamation Pledge, or spend quality time with a girl in your life.

However you choose to celebrate Day of the Girl, we don’t want it to stop there! Check out our calendar for upcoming events in our community. Send us an e-mail to have your event included, too.

We’d like to celebrate today by reflecting on what the NWGC Leadership Council has done this year. We’ve been on a listening campaign, connecting with members of the girl-serving community to hear what you want and need from your coalition. We’re not done, but we wanted to share some of what we’ve been up to:

January: Annual Leadership Council Retreat
March: NWGC Resource Fair at Seattle Asian Art Museum
April: Resource table at Powerful Voices Girlvolution
May: Resource table at Gates Foundation’s Volunteer Fair and Seattle Foundation’s GiveBIG
June: Attendance at Girls Can Do conference
July: NWGC Happy Hour at Elliott Bay Brewery in Lake City
August: Leadership Council reunion and a NWGC Happy Hour at Machine House Brewery in Georgetown

So what comes next? Leadership Council members will be reaching out to our members to ask what you want and need from us. As our strategic plan’s timeframe comes to an end, we’re looking for new board members who can join us in creating a powerful plan for the next few years. We want you to be a part of that process! Reach out to us via e-mail, social media, carrier pigeon, or bullhorn with your feedback, and tell us how you would like to get involved.

It is an honor to serve you. Until soon!

Brandi and Alison
Northwest Girls’ Coalition Co-Presidents
brandi@nwgirlscoalition.org
alison@nwgirlscoalition.org

What the Girl Justice Community Needs

One of my most interesting and rewarding adventures has been serving on the board of the Northwest Girls Coalition (NWGC). The NWGC is an all volunteer operation that strives to bring the girl-serving community together to make the world better for all girls. It’s a pretty tall order, but an admirable goal.

This summer, the NWGC is working hard to take the pulse of the girl-serving community. We’re trying to understand our community, what they want and need, and how the NWGC can deliver on those wants and needs. We’ve had some great internal conversations, but we’ve realized that they are entirely too internal. It’s time to get out and talk to people.

If you’re reading this, odds are you are a member of the girl-serving community, whether you know it not. You work at a non-profit or school, or you donate to girls’ causes, or you’re just interested. However loose your connection may be, your voice is a vital part of this discussion.

But discussion can get boring and tedious, so we’d like to invite you to a party! The members of the NWGC Leadership Committee are throwing two mixers to introduce ourselves, get to know our community members, and get the skinny on 3 critical questions:

1. What do you want?
2. What do you need?
3. What can the NWGC do for you?

Even if you don’t have concrete answers, join us. The more ideas and voices that make their way into this conversation the better!

The details:

North End Member Mixer:  July 15, 5:30-7:30 Elliot Bay Brewing Company

Stay tuned for details about another mixer in August!