This piece was produced for The First Tee- Greater Portland during a Momenta Storytelling for Nonprofits workshop.

While working for the nonprofit Too Young To Wed, the organization received a grant the would provide educational scholarships to 100 Nigerian and Kenyan girls. I was able to write a press release targeting the organization's American audience.  

 LEADERSHIP SCHOLARSHIPS GIVEN TO FORMER CHILD BRIDES TO CONTINUE EDUCATION

Funds from pop-up boutique provides one year of education for one hundred Nigerian and Kenyan girls. 

Brides Do Good has raised $25,000 for Too Young to Wed to invest in the future of former child brides. “Too Young to Wed is thrilled to receive such a generous donation from our partners at Brides Do Good! Since the inception of our partnership, we believed Brides Do Good was embarking on a brilliant idea - turning a magical day for an adult bride into a future that holds many magical days for former child brides. Together we will provide life changing scholarships for these courageous survivors,” said Stephanie Sinclair, founder of Too Young to Wed. 

This grant will enable TYTW to offer full multi-year scholarships to all Tehani Photo Workshop participants.

The TYTW Leadership Scholarships go far beyond academic excellence to offer students the spaces needed to have a real voice and create effective communication between the student and the local communities. TYTW aims to have these young women leaders voices be heard and respected to ensure real change on the ground.

In Nigeria, 43 percent of girls are married before they reach 18 years old and 17 percent are married before they turn 15 years old. In Kenya, the toughest form of child marriage affects girls as young as seven.

The TYTW workshop’s vision is to create a new generation of young women leaders, who will positively transform their local communities and aims to provide safe and healing spaces and cultivate the physical, psychological, and social and spiritual well-being of their students.  

“I am thrilled to have realised our goal through this pop-up, which was to raise enough funds to provide educational scholarships for 100 young girls. Ensuring access to a safe and quality education is key to keeping young girls out of child marriage, by taking decisive action now we can make a real difference, empowering them to make their own choices and providing them with the tools to live a more independent life so they in turn can influence their communities and future generations. Thank you to all our wonderful brides who visited the boutique at Bicester Village and found their dream dress at Brides do Good, together, we have been able to give these girls the chance of a future they deserve,” said Chantal Khoueiry, Founder Brides do Good.

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ABOUT TOO YOUNG TO WED:

Too Young to Wed’s mission is to protect girls' rights and end child marriage by providing visual evidence of the human rights challenges faced by women and girls. Through powerful storytelling, we amplify the voices of these courageous women and girls and inspire the global community to act. And through our groundbreaking girl empowerment photography workshops and scholarships, we transform influential advocacy into tangible action in the communities where the girls in our images live. Contributions to Too Young to Wed, a 501(c)(3), are tax deductible.

ABOUT BRIDES DO GOOD:

Founded by Chantal Khoueiry, Brides do Good offers brides-to-be the opportunity to purchase the world’s most beautiful pre-loved and sample designer wedding gowns at an affordable price and with the unprecedented charitable proposition to join them in addressing the global challenge of eradicating child marriage by 2030 (one of the UN sustainable goals). Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18, nearly 1 every 2 seconds. If there is no reduction, the global number of women married as children will reach 1.2 billion by 2050. www.bridesdogood.com   

ABOUT TYTW FOUNDER STEPHANIE SINCLAIR: Stephanie Sinclair is Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer known for gaining unique access to the most sensitive gender and human rights issues around the world. The ongoing capstone of Ms. Sinclair’s career is her 15-year series, Too Young to Wed, which examines the deeply troubling practice of early, forced and child marriage as it appears in a variety of cultures around the world today. The series has earned numerous global accolades, including four World Press Photo awards and numerous prestigious exhibitions including the United Nations (2012, 2014) and the Whitney Biennial (2010) in New York. Ms. Sinclair’s photographs are regularly published worldwide in esteemed outlets such as National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine, among others. Ms. Sinclair, who founded the nonprofit Too Young to Wed, is the recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2017 Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism.