International Day of the Girl by way of Just Add Girls

What did I do for International Day of the Girl?  Nothing. And for those of you that know me- from my gender development focus in the SEC program, and my win in the Jerr Boschee incubator for 17Syllables– that probably comes as a shock. But perhaps I should explain. I didn’t do anything specific on the day- I didn’t join any campaigns with CAMFED, Because I Am A Girl, or the Girl Effect– I didn’t even directly tweet or blog about it. But that is because; behind the scenes I was and am (I hope) very much doing something about it.

You know that feeling when you are in the middle of a term or a paper, and you put your head up and realize there are other things going on around you, but you just don’t have time to do anything about them because you are on a deadline? You are immersed in your subject? I have been developing 17Syllables (as the first campaign for my new entity) for the past few months in a tech incubator in Orange County…and I put my head up for a second on October 11, 2012, I saw the great campaigns, the Facebook posts, and the flow of the conversation in the Twittersphere, but I was, I am, immersed in- being days away from the beta launch of my girl power business!! So I hope I am forgiven.

The fact that there is an International Day of the Girl is amazing.  Along with examples such as micro-finance and even the Girl Effect video, it ‘proves’ that the value of women and girls is being recognized in the mainstream.

In my incubator, I have learned that, an Entrepreneur looks for the friction in the market- the place where a product or service is failing to deliver what people need, or, where a product is missing that needs to be developed. People sometimes refer to this as finding the ‘disruptive’ product or technology- in my chosen tech/social media marketplace- innovative thinking has spawned Facebook, and Pinterest.

As a Social Entrepreneur, in the marketplace of innovating solutions to social issues, I too, like the Girl Effect creators, see women and girls as the disruptive force in solving many of todays most pressing social, economic, and environmental issues.

My site is still ‘a cause oriented social network for girls,’ but it is now called +JustAddGirls. And it promotes the idea that girl power is not just a slogan, but also a specific disruptive power that girls have on solutions to global issues such as poverty, hunger, and economic growth.  This is crystalized on our site in +JAG facts such as:

#JAG_boards_of_directors: Companies with higher percentages of women at the top have 36% better stock price growth and 46% better return on equity. [Tech Crunch]

#JAG_grass_ceiling: Just giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources could increase production on women’s farms by 20 to 30 percent, feeding an additional 100-150 million people [United Nations].

#JAG_education: The education of girls yields benefits that extend into their communities and society: a woman with six or more years of education is more likely to seek prenatal care, assisted childbirth, and postnatal care, reducing the risk of maternal/child mortality. [Center For Global Development]

But my site will go beyond merely raising awareness, by sprinkling +JAG facts around Facebook and Twitter. My site- as a cause oriented social network- will allow girls to join existing causes, campaigns and initiatives ‘that add girls to the solution,’ such as Helping Women xxx on PlanetGiving, (and that support the nonprofit sector) and also, to create their own initiatives and Crowdsource their solutions on our crowd platform. (FYI- the cause features will go out launch +2.0).

What are we releasing? An ‘MVP,’ (Minimum viable product), which will consist of a Homepage presenting the business concept ‘What adds up when you +JustAddGirls’, the join/add a cause component, and most importantly, the Featured Cause- 17Syllables.

We want our user created campaigns to recognize the ‘friction in the market’, i.e. upturning the notion that women and girls aren’t valuable in society, and locate where the disruptive power of women and girls lies within that issue.

The 17Syllables campaign focuses on girls and their (mis)representation in the Media. By the time a girl is 17, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages that socialize her to under value herself, or to value herself exclusively on her image or body type. This has been linked to depression- girls rates are 7 times higher than same-age boys, suicide attempt are twice as high- with the number one reason being ‘believing they are too fat.’ It has also prompted the growing trend of girls posting videos on YouTube asking if they are ‘Pretty of Ugly?’

So where is the power here for girls? Girls actually have a unique power position in the media- Social Media- with double the Internet and social media usage rates as same-age boys, and they dominate in certain online activities, such as online content creation (35% of girls online Blog, according to Pew Research). The 17Syllables campaign aims to have girls change the dominant media conversation, from their Social Media power position.

Why 17 syllables?  “Haikus – the Japanese 17 syllable poems – were originally written about nature or the environment. We think the media environment for girls sucks.” We are asking girls to write their own 17 Syllables (through Twitter) in order to change the conversation.

And we are using social media + causes hopefully in a new addictive way. And by the way, users get points for tweeting their 17Syllables, for creating their own +JAG facts, and for sharing and liking others. Points can be used to earn enough credit to add your cause to our site, and when we reach a total of 17,000 syllables, we will give five free campaigns away, to become the first five campaigns, causes, or initiatives on the +JAG site

We want +JustAddGirls to be the Meta site for all of the info and causes on the web about women and girls as force multipliers on global solutions, and to be a platform for girls to impact the ‘+JAG effect.’ Visit (and Like us!) us now on Facebook (+JustAddGirls) and look for news there on our beta launch address and date! (And feel free to add a few #JAG facts there of your own!)

-Jen Hutchinson
SEC Cohort 2

Kamar Chafi, Cohort 3: SEA Summit

 This year the Los Angeles Chapter of the SEA hosted the Western Summit for one hundred and change social entrepreneurs to network and share best practices and new ideas for the field. Students were given the opportunity to volunteer and attend the summit for free which was an opportunity I could not pass up. “Free” is my favorite four-letter word. After working the registration table for four hours, I was able to attend breakout sessions on everything from cross-sector collaboration to measuring social impact.

In addition to the connections I made with SEA staff and other students, I was able to connect with James Fruchterman who is the President and CEO of Benetech. Benetech creates technology to serve humanity and has especially found it’s place in making books available online through bookshare.org which is the largest accessible digital library. We heard plenary speakers from organizations such as Give Something Back Office Supplies and panel discussions on scaling with folks from the non-profit, corporate, and venture philanthropy spaces.

I felt torn when it came time to pick which breakout sessions to attend. I couldn’t decide whether to go to the session on impact investing or the session on social and environmental metrics for social enterprise or any of the many other sessions with intriguing titles. I needed to be at all of them, but haven’t learned how to clone myself yet. Some classmates and I decided to divide and conquer. I made it to the Social and Environmental Metrics for Social Enterprise, Creating Employment Opportunities, Practical Tools for Cross-Sector Collaborations and Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives breakout sessions. The knowledge gained at these sessions from professional practitioners in the field and the conversation it sparked was invaluable.

 Attending the summit got me thinking more about my strengths and values as a leader. I realized that the most beneficial component of the summit for me was the crossing of paths that happened. The diversity of perspective, opinion, background, practice, industry, sector and even geography represented at the summit rang true with what Paul Light writes about in Driving Social Change: How to Solve the World’s Toughest Problems. The issues that we are passionate about as social entrepreneurs are complex and will not be solved by any one person, sector, or model alone. We need the social entrepreneurs, the social explorers, the social advocates, and the social safekeepers all engaged to begin to make a real change.

This thought got the wheels spinning for me personally. What if we increased this cross-pollination in more places and more often creating more ties, partnerships, and communication? Could we break down silos globally? Could we increase the impact we are having as a field? As a result, I have become interested in starting a San Diego chapter of the SEA and have spoken with the Chapter Services Leader about making this happen. The summit was an incredible opportunity and I am so thankful that I was able to participate in it. In the spirit of collaboration and networking, if you or anyone you know would be interested in helping to form a chapter of the SEA in San Diego, let me know. At the very least, capitalize on this opportunity should it arise again.