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.
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:
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.