International Day of the Girl (#GirlHERO)

On October 11, 2018, the global Girl Up community joined hands and celebrated the International Day of the Girl. IDG is a time to look back, remember with love all the powerful women who broke past the molds created for them, and acknowledge the work left to create a future where no girl is ever held back because of her gender. Specifically, Girl Up embraces IDG as a stepping stone to reach several Sustainable Development Goals regarding gender equality, such as SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 5 (Gender Equality), but it also helps puts a fun twist on our never-ending journey of feminism and raising the expectations of all that women can accomplish. The Southeast TX Coalition took full advantage of this amazing opportunity to reach out to everyone they could to participate in recognizing and sharing their very own GirlHero! The challenge we came up with was for people to think about who their #GirlHero was and why she inspired them, and then to write about it on a piece of paper. Next, participants took a picture of themselves with their super cool sign and posted it on social media on the Day of the Girl! The coalition compiled all of these pictures into a beautiful, inspiring video (tinyurl.com/girlupidg18) that will never fail to get you into full-on unstoppable activist mode. Though the challenge was simple, it allowed people to not only spend time thinking about the importance of recognizing unseen female heroes but also to have a lot fun while doing it. And if that wasn’t enough, the extraordinary Awkwafina liked our IDG post!