Girls Learn International is a new club that was started by seniors Mady Basich and Abby St. Claire; the club is part of Advocats and promotes gender equality and girls’ rights. The club meets every Monday after school from 3-3:30 in room 218.
Although Basich and St. Claire (one of Drops of Ink’s layout and design editors) started the club at LHS, Girls Learn International is, as its name suggests, an international club.
“It’s part of an organization. We take all of our directions from them. They’re called The Feminist Majority Leadership Foundation and it’s a human rights group that deals with issues women have within developing countries,” explained Basich. “A lot of times they give us a topic and we discuss it and do activities with it.”
The Feminist Majority Leadership Foundation helps raise money to pay for the education of girls in underprivileged countries. They send the division at LHS binders with activities, ideas and videos that the club uses in their meetings.
“There’s one big fundraising event at the end of the year called Advocacy Event that you can do whatever you want for,” said Basich. “We were thinking about doing the Mudrella Run which is Cinderella, but with mud, and it’s a run for girls’ rights and sexual health, which is in May.”
Since the club is part of Advocats (read more about this club), most, if not all, of the members of Advocats have joined Girls Learn International; the club takes up the first half of every Advocats meeting and a few new people have also joined the club.
“They came to me and they just said ‘this is related and we want to be part of your club’ I loved the idea and I wanted to support it as much as possible so I said ‘sure’,” explained Julia Thurau, the president and founder of Advocats.
Basich and Thurau shared that a few boys had participated in the club: “That was so fun because they bring such a different aspect to the club. Hearing their opinions is really cool.” Basich said.
