International Girls Summit
> Invitation to Participate

Dear Friend:

We are writing to let you know about Girls International Forum’s (GIF) exciting plans to host an International Girls’ Summit during the summer of 2006, and to encourage you to become involved in this project, called A 21st Century Girls Platform for Action.

Girls International Forum (GIF) is a non-profit organization created to empower girls to take action, through education and advocacy, on issues affecting them now and in their future. GIF was created in 1994 to involve girls in the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, and the accompanying NGO Forum. Since then, GIF has created opportunities for education and advocacy by helping girls come together to share experiences, discuss issues, collaborate on solutions, take action, and communicate their ideas to a wider community.

GIF’s plan is to invite one hundred Girl Delegates and their accompanying Women Mentors to attend the International Girls Summit, which will be held in the United States in July 2006. In the months leading up to the Summit, girl delegates and their women mentors will meet and talk with other girls in their community and country to identify issues of concern to girls. Girls and mentors will use this input to help write Girls Platform for Action and develop Action Projects to help further the goals of the Platform. While at the Summit, teams of girls and mentors will work together to finalize the Platform, design the Action Projects, learn the leadership skills needed to implement their ideas, and network with others to support their work.

Guided by the input and leadership of a diverse team of Girls Summit Leaders, ages 12-18, the main goals of A 21st Century Girls Platform for Action are to:

· Provide a forum for girls to participate in efforts to improve their lives and the lives of people worldwide.

· Empower girls to take action by developing their leadership skills in the areas of personal and public advocacy, community organizing, alliance-building and public policy development.

· Include girls from the worldwide population of girls who are underserved or marginalized within society.

At this time, we are looking for women, interns and organizations around the world that have the interest and capacity to recruit and mentor girls for participation in this project. With your history of working on women’s and girls’ issues, we thought you might be interested in participating in A 21st Century Girls Platform for Action.

GIF’s objective is to select 20 pairs of Women Mentors from around the world. Each pair of mentors would then recruit approximately five Girl Delegates to create a Summit Team. Each pair of Women Mentors will need to have enough organizational support or other resources to enable them to work with the girls from their team for at least a year following the Summit to implement their Action Project. By partnering with organizations such as yours, GIF would like to include:

• Teams from existing girl-centered programs who can come to the Summit, tell others about their successes, and learn new skills that will help them expand their work in new ways.
• Teams from organizations that have wanted to create a girl-centered leadership program and can now bring a team together to plan a project, network with others, and learn the skills they will need to continue and expand their work.

Summit teams will have the opportunity to network during the Summit and throughout the following year. GIF will provide technical assistance to the teams as they work to implement their projects. GIF will pay the cost of traveling to and attending the Summit for both Girl Delegates and Women Mentors, however, teams may be asked to participate in fund-raising efforts to help promote the Summit and Action Projects.

Please review our brochure, which describes GIF’s project and organizational history. Also see an application form, instructions, an organizational approval form, and a Woman Mentor volunteer position description, which outlines this unique opportunity to be part of a movement to involve girls as leaders with equal and meaningful decision-making capacity.

If you, your organization, or other women you know are interested, please submit two Women Mentor applications. If you are submitting an application as part of an organization, please also include the organizational approval form. To request more information, please contact GIF at summit@girlsforum.org. If you would like to participate in the project in other ways, we would love to hear from you.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Zora Radosevich and Yezenia
Executive Director and Girls Summit Leader

Girls International Forum, Inc.