Mrs. Michelle Obama will donate more than $500,000 to support adolescent girls around the world through the Girls Opportunity Alliance at the Obama Foundation.
In keeping with Mrs. Michelle Obama’s commitment to supporting adolescent girls’ education all over the world, she announced on Giving Tuesday that she will donate more than $500,000—the proceeds she derived from 2018 and 2019 merchandise sales related to her book, Becoming—to the Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund, which directly supports grassroots leaders working on adolescent girls education around the world.
“I’ve always thought of helping others as a responsibility,” Michelle Obama said. “This duty of giving back is what my parents and grandparents taught me, and it’s a value I’ve tried to live by my entire life—because it’s not enough just to make your way through life, thinking only of yourself. Over the past year I’ve been incredibly blessed and humbled by the response to my book, and I’m proud to channel that enthusiasm toward girls around the world. My hope is that this donation will help more bold and brilliant girls reach their fullest potential, continuing upward on their path toward becoming the women they are meant to be.”
The Girls Opportunity Alliance aims to engage people to take action to support adolescent girls’ education. As part of this effort, the Alliance supports grassroots leaders around the world who best understand the unique challenges girls face in their local communities—including through the Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund, which financially supports projects to empower girls throughout the world from Cambodia to Malawi to Peru.
As part of her Becoming book tour, Mrs. Obama launched a small, American-made merchandise collection that accompanied her memoir, which was published in November 2018. The collection was designed to enable readers and fans to extend the messages of Mrs. Obama’s book and accompanying tour into their daily lives. The collection featured messages from Mrs. Obama’s memoir such as, “Work to Create the World as it Should Be” and, “When They Go Low, We Go High.”
The donation will fully fund existing projects that are supported by the Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund and fund new projects being released, including a new series of projects being supported by the Fund in Vietnam.
Next week, Mrs. Obama will be visiting a school in Vietnam where she will meet with students and alumni supported by the nonprofit organization Room to Read.
Later in the week, Mrs. Obama will travel to Malaysia to participate in the Obama Leaders: Asia-Pacific program.
Since publication, Mrs. Obama has sold more than 11.7 million units of Becoming across all formats worldwide.
Note: this post based on a press release sent to Zennie62Media by the Press Office of The Office of Barack and Michelle Obama.