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Girl Up is making changes to the way we operate, and we wanted to share with you the reasons behind these decisions.
For the past fourteen years, Girl Up has grown into a tremendous global movement with impact fueled by the actions of more than 300,000 Girl Up leaders. And since the start of 2024, Girl Up has been charting a new strategic vision, outlining our most impactful programmatic priorities and areas of excellence for youth leaders. Throughout these conversations, our youth have expressed the need for Girl Up to become a more decentralized model of operation that can meaningfully represent our global diversity, leveraging the power and brain trust of our regional teams to create solutions, alongside our youth leaders, to the most urgent issues faced worldwide.
At the same time, we are living through a moment of permacrisis that is resulting in an overextended philanthropy landscape, and we have experienced unexpected funding shifts. To ensure Girl Up remains sustainable for future generations of trailblazers to gain the leadership skills they need to create meaningful, global change, we must practice even more prudent financial stewardship.
Throughout the year, we have made significant budget cuts to our operations, and now, in response to our funding reality and in line with our new strategic direction, we are reducing the staff headcount at our U.S.-based headquarters and cutting back on some program activities, decreasing our expenses and maintaining the most important programmatic aspects of our work. This decision was made with a very heavy heart and the utmost respect for all our team members who have contributed immensely to Girl Up’s success. We are grateful for everything they’ve given to Girl Up.
As we lay the groundwork to implement our new strategic vision later this year, we are streamlining our activities and strengthening the foundation that will allow Girl Up to focus our attention on: 1) our programmatic priorities, honing in on our most unique contributions in the girls and youth space and areas of excellence and innovation; and 2) transitioning our headquarters to a central resource office, effectively supporting the work that will be carried out by our talented regional and country teams and Girl Up affiliates.
We are confident about this new strategic direction while also recognizing how emotional these changes are for our community. This moment of change requires Girl Up to focus on a smooth transition so that we may continue to deliver our most critical work effectively to our Girl Up leaders around the world who depend on us.
We know the path to gender justice is not linear; it entails many trials. Girl Up will persevere. Our most important asset is our community – including our youth, our staff, and our partners and supporters – all of you. We are grateful to have you on this journey with us – because our way forward is together.
