First, we would love to thank all of our supporters, sponsors, attendees, and the wonderful women in our programs. Our 13th annual Out of Africa was a success in so many ways. We are blessed to have been able spend another year celebrating with you and share the achievements of our organization and the members of our programs.

This year our guests enjoyed good laughs and good times with our favorite emcee, Will Forte, and were mystified by the mind-bending illusions of magician, Ben Jackson.

The night was filled with both a silent and live auction, guest speakers Dorothy Ombajo, our Kenya Country Director, as well as three young leaders from our Young Women’s Leadership Challenge year-long program, Sarah, Fatmata, and Samyu (see speeches below). We achieved our donations goal, which contributed to a total raised for the evening of over $100,000!

 

Sarah Laskin:

Good evening. Thank you to the Pangea Group for inviting me to speak tonight. My name is Sarah Laskin and I am a 10th grader at The Awty International School. It’s an honor to share my experience and the impact attending this past summer’s conference had on me.

Anybody can go to a local homeless shelter or food bank and put time in for a certificate. However, not everyone can channel their own passion into a project, which not only is something the person loves doing, but also something that can make the community better. YWLC helps teenage girls, like me, find their call to action and shows them that no matter how much we may think we can’t make an impact, we can!

YWLC gave me a great sense of purpose and it helped me realize what I am capable of.

Shortly after the YWLC conference, I heard about a pathways proposal in my town of Bellaire. The proposal was to install concrete paths, resulting in the removal of trees and grass. This proposal was established right after Hurricane Harvey and I was perplexed as to why they would want to spend money on something that didn’t seem to be a priority. The old me would have been upset, but not done anything. The new me, however, decided to speak up against this proposal. I attended the city council meeting and shared my thoughts from the perspective of a teenager in front of an overflowing room of local citizens. If it weren’t for YWLC, I would not have had the courage nor leadership skills to speak there, or here, today.

A few weeks after that City Council meeting, my mom sent me a letter while I was at camp and told me the Pathways Proposal was dead. I felt my little part in speaking up helped sway any fencers to vote against the proposal.

 

Just like I made a change in the community, I know I have the ability to make many more. The Pangea network is such an empowering organization and in such a short time, taught me so much about myself and how I can make a difference. Just imagine if more girls could have this experience, what would their futures look like and what changes might they offer our world?

Fatmata:

If you asked me to describe the Young Women’s Leadership Challenge in one word, it would be “inspirational”. Every single young woman in the Pangea Network has inspired me to never underestimate myself and to always believe that “I am capable of anything”.  YWLC has impacted my life because it gave me the fuel that always drives me to keep working hard to reach my big goals. By participating in the conference, I learned how to come out of my shell and to be more confident interacting with people I don’t know. The experience also made me apply myself in new AND different ways. Such as, paying it forward everyday. Simply just buying a coffee for a friend or even just complimenting a stranger are ways that I paid it forward. I have learned that I am so much stronger than my doubts and more capable of pushing through the challenges that come my way. Because of this, I believe that every single young woman should be introduced to YWLC because of the impact the program can soak into you mentally, physically, emotionally, socially and personally.

 

Samyu:

I’d like to begin by thanking Ms. Nicole for giving me the honor of speaking tonight about the Young Women’s Leadership Challenge: 6 days that shed light on the privilege, opportunities, and power I have as a young woman in the United States. It is the summer of 2017. I sit in a room with 39 high school girls, each encompassed with an overwhelming thirst for success. Although as young women, we may feel as though labels define us, in this room, it mattered less that your family was on food stamps or that you attended a private school and more that over the next week, you will become a catalyst for change. In this short time, driven young women are taught about social entrepreneurship, body imaging, self-esteem, global issues, conflict resolution, and my personal favorite, financial literacy. Not only were we taught vital life skills but we were exposed to respected professional women from a plethora of career backgrounds. Although each of these girls comes from all walks of life, we found that we are far more alike than different. By the end of the week, the most quiet had broken out of their shells, the most tough had made herself vulnerable, and everyone had shed a few- or in some cases a lot- of tears. I created a strong network of incredibly genuine and trustworthy allies through YWLC. These are girls with uplifting spirits, desire to work hard, aspirations to be someone, and an overwhelming amount of gratitude for the simplest of things. These are girls with whom I will forever cherish my relationship because we were fortunate enough not only to experience a program like YWLC but to do so together. At the end of each day, I’m sure the girls would agree with me when I say that we were anxious to do more, get involved, and instill our own unique print in our respective communities. For that reason, the Take Action Challenge was created: a personal project to “pay it forward” that is dreamed, designed and done by you. Through our TAC’s, YWLC alumni have provided prom dresses for hurricane Harvey victims, organized after-school tutoring programs for children in low-income areas, published books, raised funds and made countless other impacts on the world around them. In each girl that attends YWLC, emerges an empowered young woman who believes that they are worthy, loved, unstoppable, and capable of being a catalyst for change. We are women. We are proud. We are enough. We are the future. Thank you.

Again, we would like to thank all of our supporters, sponsors, attendees, and the wonderful women in our programs who helped make our 13th annual Out of Africa a huge success!