A Surprise from Arianna Huffington for the Kisa Scholars

You may remember our excitement when The Huffington Post profiled She’s the First for Women’s History Month in March. It got better: Arianna Huffington tweeted the story to her 600,000+ followers. And then, the icing on the cake was when we submitted an essay from Elizabeth David, sponsored in Tanzania, and she was featured on the homepage of The Huffington Post Impact section, as  “Greatest Person of the Day,” making Elizabeth the first She’s the First sponsored student to become a published author in major media!

Tweet from @AriannaHuff about She's the First

We wrote to Elizabeth about her achievement, and told her a little bit more about Arianna Huffington’s career, including that she had written an inspiring book On Becoming Fearless….in Love, Work and Life, of which we’d be sure to send her a copy. Elizabeth was overjoyed:

I’m so very happy about the news you gave me,you realy made my day. Thank you so much for the book that you’ll be sending me,I love reading books and I’m sure I will love the book….I must say one of the things I enjoy doing is writting and hearing from you guys.I must be very lucky to have you guys as my sponsors.
With lots of love,
Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's Huffington Post feature

We figured we’d go to Barnes & Noble as a last resort, but first, we wrote to Arianna’s office and requested an autographed copy of the book for Elizabeth, and her two fellow Kisa Scholars sponsored by GIRLS WHO ROCK, Happiness and Grace. It never hurts to ask…because yesterday, three inscribed copies of the book arrived! We are so excited to deliver them to AfricAid founder Ashley Shuyler when we meet her for breakfast on Thursday. She’s visiting NYC from Colorado and will be packing up for Tanzania soon, when she’ll hand deliver the books to the girls for us.

We can’t even imagine how touched Elizabeth, Happiness, and Grace will be to know that one of the busiest women in media opened her heart up to them and cared about sending them a copy of a semi-autobiographic book packed with her best wisdom.

Thank you, Ms. Arianna Huffington, from all of us at She’s the First! You inspire us to make an Impact, each and every day.