Birthday girl Lauren!
Just a few short months ago, She’s the First celebrated its first birthday. Today, I celebrate my 25th. In honor of that milestone, I decided to do something different this year.
Many people, myself included, often use birthdays as an excuse to buy yourself something nice. It’s my birthday, I want it, and I deserve it! While that can be fun for a while, all you end up doing is acquiring a lot of “stuff.” So as a way to celebrate the next stage of my life, I decided to offer the option of having a “next stage” to someone else.
This year I am sponsoring a girl through She’s the First’s Starfish One By One partnership. This girl will gain education, support, and the knowledge that she can accomplish things on her own. I was having drinks one night with Christen Brandt, She’s the First’s Executive Director, and she told a story she heard while visiting the school in Guatemala that shook me to my core. Not only is the education each girl receives benefitting her and her future offspring, but it’s going up to older generations too. A sponsored girl went to school and learned about sex education and how to prevent pregnancy. She then went home and told her parents, who already had eight children, that this is something that is possible, doable for them. Now her parents are working towards taking better care of the children they already have and not worrying about adding another mouth to feed.
This is what She’s the First is about for me: giving someone else a chance to grow and learn and teach that to others. Enable them to become the amazing women we know they can be. And so I ask that you wish the girl I will be sponsoring a happy first year on her way to achieving that dream.
Here’s to another quarter-century of fun and sponsorships!
