Girls Opportunity Alliance

Michelle Obama enjoys a conversation with a group of women. Most of the woman have island or latin facial features. One of the woman on the right has light skin tones and blonde and brown hair tied in a bun. Most if not all are wearing a traditional dress, possibly Hawaiian. Michelle Obama is wearing identical yellow hawaiian neclaces and a white traditional dress. The other womans dresses are a variance colors. The two women on the right have neclaces of a green flat leaf plant. They are standing in a curved line outside infront of well trimmed tall bushes. In the background is a huge building with most squre based arcitechture. It is burnt dark red and white.

The Girls Opportunity Alliance began in 2018 with the goal of empowering adolescent girls around the world through education.

Today, we’re doing that and more. 

In 2022, we expanded our reach by providing funding support through our Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund to 21 new grassroots organizations in 14 countries. This includes organizations from five new countries: Mexico, Colombia, Nepal, Thailand, and Mozambique. We also grew our Network of grassroots leaders by 300, for a total of 4,100 global members. The Girls Opportunity Alliance Network provides opportunities for grassroots leaders around the world to connect, share, and collaborate as they strengthen and scale their work.

To-date, the Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund has supported 70 grassroots projects for girls’ education and empowerment in 25 countries like India, Malawi, Cambodia, and Peru. This work is made possible by contributions from more than 10,000 individual donors from all 50 states and 40 countries.

When we work together to get every girl to the place she wants to be, we create a better world for us all.

A Closer Look: #GetHerThere

Mrs. Obama’s passion for women and girls’ equality runs deep. 

So much so that on the International Day of the Girl—and the fourth anniversary of the Girls Opportunity Alliance—we launched the Get Her There campaign. 

Get Her There is a global call to action to drive awareness and action that will empower adolescent girls to reach their full potential. It’s a way for everyone to get involved to help every girl around the world achieve her dreams. Our goal is to bring together an alliance of everyday people, brands, industry leaders, high-profile individuals, and philanthropists to raise funds to support adolescent girls’ education and empowerment. 

To kick off the campaign, we organized a luncheon in New York City hosted by Marsai Martin, featuring a musical performance by Sara Bareilles, remarks from young women in the Girls Opportunity Alliance, and a panel discussion featuring Mrs. Obama, Amal Clooney, Melinda French Gates, and Wanjriu Wahome, a leader from the Samburu Girls Foundation in Kenya. 

Maria Florinda Meletz Chumil and Vilma Saloj stand behind a clear podium and speak at the Girls Opportunity Alliance Get Her There campaign event. Both have medium skin tones, dark hair, and are wearing traditional Guatemalan clothing, rich with jewel-toned colors and intricate patterns.

The day before the luncheon, we brought together grassroots leaders working on girls’ education issues around the world to share their stories, learn from one another, and participate in workshops—our first in-person gathering of our global Network since the pandemic.

Since October, Get Her There has yielded nearly $10M in donations to the Girls Opportunity Alliance—another example of the power of our network! Check out some of the organizations joining us to support Get Her There:

Nonprofit collaborators:

  • The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

  • Camfed - The Campaign for Female Education

  • CARE

  • The Clooney Foundation for Justice

  • Girls Inc.

  • Girl Rising

  • International Center for Research on Women

  • Malala Fund

  • Population Council

  • Room to Read

  • She’s the First

  • The Streisand Foundation

  • UNICEF

  • UN Girls’ Education Initiative

Corporate supporters: 

  • Comcast

  • FedEx

  • Lego

  • Lululemon

  • Olivela

  • Saks

Our Work at Home

We spent 2022 working to expand our programming to support adolescent girls across the United States. We are continuing to connect with girl-serving organizations to better understand the needs of grassroots organizations, their leadership, and girls. We’ve convened focus groups in cities including New York, Atlanta, and Honolulu to hear from these organizations. 

At the beginning of the year, Mrs. Obama also met with eight students in Hawaiʻi to hear their stories and their perspectives on leadership, culture, and finding one’s identity. 

At home in Chicago, we have collaborated with more than 40 Chicagoland grassroots organizations on Network session trainings and community events across the city—from celebrating Earth Day with a park clean-up to bringing students to a Chicago Bulls game with President Obama. We were proud to start a Shadow Days series alongside the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance to expose young people to new opportunities and career paths, including experiences at Aon and McDonald’s headquarters to learn about business. 

As part of our efforts in Chicago, Mrs. Obama met with young women from local organizations like SHE Chicago, Polished Pebbles, and Working on Womanhood (WOW) to discuss their dreams, the challenges they face, and how the Girls Opportunity Alliance can continue to support them in the years to come.

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Mrs. Obama smiles on stage holding a microphone. She wears a chain necklace and a dark gray top.

“ Meeting with them reminded me of why I started the Girls Opportunity Alliance in the first place. These girls are so bright, so determined, so fiercely talented. They deserve the world. And I can’t wait to see how they use their education to lift us all up in years ahead.”

–Former First Lady Michelle Obama