A Decade in the Fight for Girls' Rights: A Retrospective Report by She's the First

A DECADE IN THE FIGHT FOR GIRLS' RIGHTS RETROSPECTIVE REPORT

MISSION She’s the First teams up with grassroots organizations to make sure girls everywhere are educated, respected, and heard.

VISION We fight for a world where every girl chooses her own future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 04

INTRODUCTION WELCOME FAST FACTS OBSTACLES 08

ADAPTING TO GIRLS’ EVOLVING NEEDS WHERE WE STARTED OUR FOCUS TODAY STRENGTHENING ECOSYSTEMS ENGAGING IN GIRL-LED ADVOCACY

OUR IMPACT & WHAT'S NEXT BY THE NUMBERS PARTNER PORTFOLIO LEARNING AGENDA 25

APPENDIX CRISIS RESPONSE CASE STUDIES SPONSORSHIP MODELS APPRECIATION

INTRODUCTION

WELCOME In 2009, She’s the First (STF) launched as a social media campaign that illuminated the need to educate girls and respect their rights globally. Within three years, the campaign grew into a movement composed of students, communitybased organizations (CBOs), and girls’ rights advocates. In a world that too often fails to prioritize girls, and in fact marginalizes and abuses them, this movement works toward one shared goal: a world where every girl chooses her own future.

Everything we do is filtered through our core values: a girlcentered and antioppressive approach. Today, She’s the First is an international non-profit that teams up with local organizations to ensure girls everywhere are educated, respected, and heard. Our efforts to strengthen ecosystems and advance advocacy for girls’ rights have reached more than 167,000 girls, 100 organizations, and 240 practitioners over the past decade.

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This report is designed for our funders, peer organizations, and advocates with two purposes in mind: Internally, it acts as a compass that points She’s the First in our future direction. Externally, our radical transparency is our contribution to building the field of grassroots girls’ organizations. We hope that our candid reflections reduce the hurdles that others face. This report:

explores the context of our work and our evolution as an organization benchmarks progress made dives into the lessons learned in creating impact with and for girls globally applies those lessons to our present and future priorities

FAST FACTS Patriarchal systems, poverty, white supremacy, and humanitarian disasters hold girls back everywhere. Despite the progress made for girls over the past decade, we know that worldwide:

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132 MILLION GIRLS ARE OUT OF SCHOOL TODAY. 20 MILLION MORE ARE EXPECTED TO DROP OUT DUE TO THE PANDEMIC.

0:02

ONE GIRL UNDER THE AGE OF 18 IS MARRIED EVERY TWO SECONDS.

MILLION

40% MORE TIME AT HOME

GIRLS SPEND 40% MORE TIME ON CHORES AND HOUSEHOLD RESPONSIBILITIES THAN THEIR BROTHERS DO, WHICH MEANS LESS TIME FOR STUDYING AND BUILDING SUPPORT NETWORKS.

Sources: World Bank; Malala Fund; Girls Not Brides; UNICEF

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OBSTACLES Girls perpetually face barriers on the basis of their gender, let alone their many other intersecting identities (including ethnicity, religion, caste, economic status, sexuality, physical ability, and more). Working on a global scale to address this discrimination is never easy, as it requires navigating multiple and sometimes contradictory cultures, values, political systems, environments, and challenges. Therefore, STF has never used a one-size-fits-all approach.

Over the past decade, girls have faced countless challenges, including: the COVID-19 pandemic discrimination against Indigenous populations conflict and the climate crisis in South Sudan the Ebola crisis of 2014-2016 Please see the Appendix for case studies on how we've responded to crises as a coalition.

Local partners are anchors of change. They contextualize issues facing girls, and then implement effective programs to combat them. REACH OF OUR LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS:

Latin America West Africa Guatemala The Gambia Peru Sierra Leone

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East Africa Ethiopia Kenya South Sudan Tanzania Uganda

South Asia India Nepal

ADAPTING TO GIRLS’ EVOLVING NEEDS

WHERE WE STARTED

She’s the First began in 2009 with the goal of increasing girls’ access to school, so they could be the first in their families to graduate. We focused on underserved girls living in or near poverty. At the time, our strategy rested on the idea that girls were more likely to impact their local communities if they had increased access to quality education and graduated from secondary school. In the beginning, we considered graduation to be the end goal, and we granted the funding necessary for one girl at a time to get there. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

We partnered with local organizations that:

directly placed girls into high-quality educational environments, or supplemented a sub-par educational experience with after-school programming designed to increase girls’ opportunities in the long run. Through this process, we provided more than 7,500 scholarships to girls worldwide. But we soon learned that wasn't enough. 09

FINDING OUR END GAME Five years later, after visiting girls, seeing partners in action, and interacting with local experts and advocates, we revised our end goal. After all: If a girl manages to graduate but never learns her rights or develops the skills to advocate for herself; if she ends up married at 19 and saddled with housework against her greater ambitions; if her sons are still more likely to attend school than her daughters, then how has the world changed for the better for future generations of girls? Alternatively, if a girl never reaches graduation but learns her rights and achieves the skills and confidence to advocate for herself; if she’s able to run a small business and choose her partner and

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the number of her children; if she’s able to fight for her daughter’s right to an equal and quality education, then how could we call that a failure? We couldn’t! Today, we work toward achieving the 5th Sustainable Development Goal: gender equality. Without dismantling gender-based oppression, a diploma alone cannot guarantee success for a girl. Turn to the Appendix to learn how this impacted our communications model.

OUR FOCUS TODAY To truly build a world where every girl is educated, respected, and heard, we need to address the broken systems holding girls back. She’s the First exists today to solve three strategic issues:

GIRLS’ VOICES ARE OVERLOOKED, EVEN IN THE SPACES WHERE THEY SHOULD HOLD POWER.

ORGANIZATIONS LACK THE NECESSARY RESOURCES (PARTICULARLY FUNDING) TO PROVIDE HOLISTIC SUPPORT FOR GIRLS.

POLICIES, SYSTEMS, AND COMMUNITIES FAIL TO SUPPORT THE FULL EXPRESSION OF GIRLS’ RIGHTS.

We tackle these issues by strengthening ecosystems and advancing advocacy for girls’ rights. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

STRENGTHENING ECOSYSTEMS Lack of access to funds, practical training, and other resources prevents communitybased organizations from delivering on their unique value. This is especially true for women-led organizations in the Global South. Only 2.1% of global funding goes to 1 organizations in the Global South, and funding that does arrive at the local level frequently comes with strings attached. Funders require data that's too intense for the level of donation or size of an organization, or they restrict funds to a particular program or to “direct costs.” The work of finding, applying for, and reporting on funding creates a large amount of administrative work for organizations and actively pulls resources away from projects at the community level.

We strengthen the ecosystem of grassroots, women-led girl organizations by providing: flexible funding training tools and resources North-South & South-South networking Women-led, community-based organizations (CBOs) are best-positioned to create change for girls. Their local expertise, influence within the community, and hyper-local advocacy and intervention efforts propel social change every day. Research has shown that women are more effective leaders during times of crisis and that girls are more likely to succeed when 2 matched with female role models. That's why these organizations are the backbone of our ecosystem strengthening strategy. What is flexible funding? This funding may be used for a variety of purposes at the discretion of the recipient. In our case, our funding to CBOs is unrestricted as long as it is spent on programs for girls, thus making it flexible. The recipient ultimately reports back on the use and outcomes of the funding, usually within a year. Flexible funding is one expression of our anti-oppressive approach to partnerships. 1 Source: UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and data from the OECD 2 Sources: Zenger Folkman, 2020 and Demography, Volume 36-Number 2, May 1999

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HOW WE DO IT We strengthen the ecosystem through three main initiatives:

STF PARTNER COALITION The STF Partner Coalition consists of community-based organizations in 11 countries working on girls’ education and girls’ rights. These organizations receive flexible funding, personalized on-site training as needed, girl-centered tools, and networking opportunities.

GIRLS FIRST NETWORK The Girls First Network is STF’s larger network of practitioners and organizations working toward a better future for girls. This network is also invited to our annual Girls First Summit in Nairobi, as well as webinars and online trainings, to promote shared knowledge across the sector. Members like to exchange funding opportunities, programming tools, and lessons learned with each other.

GIRL-LED INCUBATOR Our Girl-Led Incubator program includes girls and women under the age of 27 who operate early-stage communitybased programs. These leaders and their teams receive training in organizational development and feminist leadership, along with mentorship and fiscal sponsorship. The ultimate goal is to support the growth of young community activists and leaders. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

TRAINING PHILOSOPHY Training in practical girl-centered design has become a staple of STF’s work. It's the heart of our ecosystem building strategy. Every training we host must meet four main criteria: Designed using participatory methods: We survey participants to understand their needs and areas of interest within our available training topics.

Open-sourced to community-based organizations: Organizations with budgets under $750,000 USD may use our tools, resources, and trainings for free (as capacity allows).

Customized to local context and practical: Takeaways are easily transferable and usable by organizations with small teams and limited resources.

Includes girls’ voices : Bringing in girls’ opinions and experiences allows us to design sessions that 1) address specific needs and 2) ensure we’re working from the right set of assumptions.

Girl Hour is a module we created at our Girls First Summit in Nairobi to include girls' voices in a conference setting. Girls speak to the real needs and experiences of their peers. This module has many steps to ensure an ethical and impactful engagement with girls; it also shows girls that they have power in the programs and policies affecting them.

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TRAINING FOCUS We’ve seen the most positive results in trainings and resources that focus on these three areas, which are often overlooked in standard organizational trainings:

FEMINIST MENTORSHIP An approach to mentorship which is neither overly prescriptive nor peer level. It allows space for girls to make their own decisions while providing them with all the necessary information and support they need to find their way. Feminist mentorship is based on the recognition of girls’ rights and agency over their own lives.

STRONG SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS (SRHR) PROGRAMS STF works with local facilitators and feminist organizations to strengthen SRHR programs for girls. We incorporate peer educators and focus groups into the design process. When girls’ concerns and questions form the basis of the program, practitioners can create more effective SRHR programs.

GIRL-CENTERED PROGRAMMING The ethical inclusion of girls’ voices and opinions makes for stronger programs and a better understanding of our successes and shortcomings. Our girl-centered design training focuses on tools and techniques practitioners can use with girls as they develop or evaluate a program. These tools and resources are custom-designed based on the needs of organizations within the STF Partner Coalition and Girls First Network.

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GIRLS FIRST SUMMIT

a conference for community-based organizations to grow their girl-centered skills and knowledge The Girls First Summit is an annual conference held in Nairobi, Kenya, which started as an annual meeting with the African members of our partner coalition. In 2017, working with Kenyan partner Akili Dada, we opened a day of our meeting to other local girls' organizations, focusing the agenda on girl-centered principles. The demand was so high that from then on, it became a three-day conference attracting 75+ registrations yearly.

As a result, we’ve seen organizations update their mentorship models to ensure girls have access to life skills information and guidance (rather than a prescribed solution); we’ve seen religiously affiliated organizations implement SRHR programs with a rights-based focus; and we’ve seen girls blossom into youth activists and leaders. We often use the modules and trainings delivered at the Girls First Summit when facilitating at other conferences, giving webinars, or conducting on-site training with partners. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

ENGAGING IN GIRL-LED ADVOCACY As a relatively small organization with an exceptionally large footprint, we’ve discovered our strongest asset is when girls can advocate for themselves with and through She’s the First. All too often, those in the girls’ empowerment space talk about the leadership potential and power of girls, yet as a sector, we fail to include their voices in meaningful ways. To shift our own habits, our girl-led advocacy incorporates two approaches:

We build resources for girls to advocate for themselves. Our toolkits for girls and our global campus community are designed to support girls and their allies in standing up for their rights on the local and international level.

Girls set the agenda for our campaigns and beyond. Our Girls Advisory Council weighs in on STF media campaigns and resources. Two student representatives from the Girls Advisory Council sit on our Board of Directors. We regularly host Girl Hour (page 14) at conferences and events.

When included in our own programming processes, girls have identified new ways of distributing toolkits and ideas for working with local leaders. They’ve lobbied against a period tax and they’ve educated their peers on the rights of girls globally. Roshni Singh (right), a 20-year-old Board Director of She's the First, engages in activism against rape in her home of Surkhet, Nepal.

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MEDIA CAMPAIGNS

She's A Girl First

Global Girls' Bill of Rights

In 2018, we launched the She’s a Girl First campaign with Purposeful and Project PIKIN, two Sierra Leonean organizations, to protest a ban against pregnant girls attending school. The campaign linked to petitions and drove influential media impressions via television and radio, in addition to fervent social media discussion. Ultimately, it helped activists overturn the ban in Sierra Leone in March 2020.

In 2019, we organized a worldwide effort to create a Global Girls’ Bill of Rights with regional co-hosts MAIA and Akili Dada. The initiative gave girls a platform to stand up for their most cherished rights and provided an anchor for any girl organization to use in their advocacy.

Attitudes, policies, and laws that impact a girl’s life trajectory must change. That's what our girl-led advocacy initiatives accomplish— one person, family, and community at a time. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

More than 1,000 girls from 36 countries participated in five languages, some from their smartphones, others on written paper. A representative panel of girls ultimately whittled down the results into 10 rights that they, and all girls, deserve to experience. They presented the bill to Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina J. Mohammad.

CAMPUS COMMUNITY

Since 2010, we’ve galvanized a generation of young women and their allies to advocate for girls’ rights through our campus chapters at high schools, colleges, and universities globally. Campus community members have a private online portal for peer mentoring and discussion guides. We also host an annual activist training summit for them. We teach them a nuanced understanding of gender issues and how to take action at a local and global level.

A typical week in the life of a campus leader might include:

attending their chapter meeting on Monday sharing an online petition about women’s rights policy on Tuesday launching a fundraiser to support girls’ access to mentors on Wednesday calling their representatives about the tampon tax on Thursday mentoring at a local elementary school on Friday

Campus community members and alumni create change not only for themselves and their immediate peers, but also with and for their peers across the globe. After graduation, you might find campus alumni hosting fundraisers while championing more equitable policies in their workplace. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

OUR IMPACT & WHAT'S NEXT

OUR ANNUAL IMPACT Each year, we reach more than 138,000 girls across 26 countries through our work strengthening ecosystems and advocating for girls’ rights.

102,900 girls

engage with our campus community and advocacy toolkits

25,200 girls

reached through 165 trained practitioners

9,945 girls

92%

reached through partner programs

of our partners request training from STF in the areas of mentorship, strong SRHR programs, and including girls’ voices in programming decisions. The STF Partner Coalition consistently reports these are the 3 most effective interventions.

70%

of practitioners update or implement a policy or program as a result of what they’ve learned at an STF training.

PARTNER PORTFOLIO Funding our STF Partner Coalition accounts for more than 50% of our overall budget each year. As part of our evaluation process and as we prepare for a 2023 cohort of partners, we studied which organizations benefited most from our approach. We have maximum impact on organizations that are:

locally founded, especially by women focused on girls’ programming and concerned with girls’ rights small-to-mid-sized (at or under a budget of $1 million USD)

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Looking ahead to our next cohort in 2023, STF will prioritize funding organizations and grassroots projects that fit this profile, while ensuring our toolkits and trainings remain open and free to girls and CBOs.

OUR LEARNING AGENDA With these reflections come new questions. We recognize that much of our measurement to date has focused on impact at the organizational level. We need to deepen our approach to understand the effects of those changes on girls themselves. Our evaluative priorities are:

HOW DO PROGRAMS IMPACT GIRLS’ AGENCY? To fully assess the success of girls’ organizations as a collective (and particularly our STF Partner Coalition), we’d like to study the change in girls’ agency (reflected by a combination of her self-esteem, goals, and life circumstances) over time. As STF’s Partner Coalition cohort restarts in 2023, we’ll have the opportunity to study this on a baseline, mid-point, and post-partnership timeline.

WHICH TOOLS, METHODOLOGIES, AND STRATEGIES ARE MOST EFFECTIVE IN STRENGTHENING OUTCOMES FOR GIRLS? Better understanding this will allow us to focus our efforts in distributing the most effective and practical material to community-based organizations.

HOW IS THE ECOSYSTEM AROUND GIRLS SHIFTING TO BETTER SUPPORT THEM IN OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO SUCCESS? In a longitudinal study, we’ll collect funding and programming information from girls’ organizations and disaggregate the data by organization size, leadership, geography, and more to understand how the ecosystem around girls is changing, as well as its positive (or negative) impacts.

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NEXT STEPS Simply put, our values will guide us forward. To grow as a girl-centered and anti-oppressive international organization, we commit to:

strengthen our Nairobi office and move grantmaking and training decisions to local hubs hire executive leadership from the Global South grow our training and advocacy programs, while better tracking our impact through them engage in girl-led advocacy at the local and global level via the leadership of our Girls’ Advisory Council Girls should not have to conquer an obstacle course to determine their own futures. Girls don’t need to change to fit stereotypes and roles that others have written for them. It is not girls’ fault that the systems around them have failed them, time and time again. She’s the First proudly stands by their side as we work with community-based organizations and allies across the globe to change those systems for good. We hope you'll join us.

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APPENDIX

CRISIS RESPONSE CASE STUDIES In addition to the baseline challenges of poverty, patriarchy, and colonialism, girls have battled other major obstacles throughout the past decade. Here are a few snapshots of those barriers: CHALLENGE

ADDRESSING IT

COVID-19 PANDEMIC COVID-19 shut down schools globally. As a result, girls’ domestic responsibilities increased and there is anecdotal evidence of increases in child marriages, child labor, teenage pregnancy, and sexual exploitation. The Malala Fund estimates that 20 million more girls may never return to school after the pandemic. The disparity between girls who had access to technology and those who didn’t showed us technology is no longer a luxury, but a necessity, if we expect girls to reach their full potential. The pandemic also left many of our partners scrambling to cover fundraising shortfalls, and we had to cut our own budget by more than half a million dollars in 2020.

We moved quickly to fulfill our funding obligations to partners ahead of schedule; they in turn pivoted, using funds to provide care kits, educational materials, and technology access for girls. We moved our trainings online and developed a Girl-Centered Risk Register and a webinar on hosting focus groups. This aided organizations in mitigating new risks. However, we needed to downsize our staff and take pay cuts to achieve the above.

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS Historically, Indigenous populations have been marginalized to an alarming extent. In Guatemala, fewer than 1% of Indigenous girls enter university, and they face discrimination against their culture, languages, and huipil (traditional clothing). In Peru, Indigenous girls living in the Andes have a near impossible hurdle in accessing secondary school: While primary schools are taught in the highlands in their own languages, secondary schools are often too far away in towns and classes are held in Spanish. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

In working with Indigenous-led organizations in Latin America, we’ve had the privilege of seeing culture and progress go hand-in-hand. Girls need mentors from their own communities who can guide them in navigating how to honor their culture and identity, while also breaking cycles of poverty and discrimination.

CRISIS RESPONSE CASE STUDIES CHALLENGE

ADDRESSING IT

CONFLICT AND CLIMATE CRISES IN SOUTH SUDAN Since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has faced ongoing conflict, famine, and most recently, extreme flooding. These circumstances make it incredibly difficult for girls to attend school consistently and increase risks to their mental health and physical well-being. In 2013, only 500 girls in the entire country reached graduation, and each subsequent year brings more challenges. Very few programs can run predictably amid a flood or armed conflict.

To reach deeply vulnerable girls, we practice flexibility, adaptability, and trust in local leadership, particularly as new conflicts and climate crises arise. Our local partner, Project Education South Sudan, provides a stable source of support and mentorship for girls as they are surrounded by instability.

EBOLA CRISIS OF 2014-2016 In many ways, the Ebola crisis in West Africa previewed the many challenges that would later face girls as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With schools closed and girls confined to their homes and immediate communities, domestic violence rose, as did teenage pregnancy. Girls under the age of 19 faced a pregnancy rate of 28% in Sierra Leone and, at the time, a ban on pregnant schoolgirls disrupted their education further. (See our media campaign that addressed this on page 18.) Many girls lost parents and loved ones to the virus, and their academic and life goals suffered extreme set-backs in the face of the regional tragedy.

STF began working closely with local partners and activists in Sierra Leone immediately after borders and schools reopened in 2015. Together, we identified the unique challenges of girls who had survived the crisis. It was important to provide basic supplies and maintain contact with girls while they were unable to meet with educators or mentors in person. These lessons later informed our COVID-19 response.

Source: Sierra Leone Demographic and Health Survey 2013

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FROM SCHOLARSHIPS TO SYSTEMIC CHANGE A case study on updating our funding & communications model

She’s the First has always funded local organizations and trusted their expertise, but we have made significant adaptations to shift more power to them. This growth reflects a core value STF has developed over time: an anti-oppressive approach to our work with grassroots organizations and with girls. As an organization that started in New York City, we had to learn quickly and adapt to ensure that our model, our messaging, and our approach were all working cohesively to eliminate inequalities and promote girls’ rights. We also had to unlearn: Much of philanthropy and development work is based on a history of inequality and colonialism. To break this mold, we had to recognize the limits of our original sponsorship model, as well as the ways our inherent biases impacted our messaging. In the early days of She’s the First, you might have seen us use footage that portrayed girls as helpless or as victims, because we wanted to show the scope of the problem. What we didn’t realize was that such messaging removed girls’ agency and their work from the equation, when in reality, girls are the heroes of their own stories. In 2017, we moved away from our traditional scholarship (or sponsorship) model, in which donors were matched 1:1 with a girl they supported. At this time, STF’s funding to our partner organizations was also restricted to direct education expenses and approved “extras.” Four big realizations informed this shift.

WHY SPONSORSHIP MODELS FAIL US SPONSORSHIP REINFORCES COLONIAL POWER DYNAMICS. This model positions the sponsor (often a person of means, white, living in the Global North) as the savior and the student as the victim, a dynamic we’re working to end by showing the agency and power of girls globally. We don’t want to uphold a system that reinforces the idea that girls are victims, waiting to be saved. On a similar note, donors in the Global North should not dictate how funds are spent in the Global South. Those closest to the problem, girls and the organizations working with them, are best positioned to make that decision and must be treated as equal partners in the fight for a better world.

TOO MANY GIRLS ARE ALREADY BOUGHT AND/OR SOLD. A sponsorship model is objectifying by nature, when the girl—or at least her biographical information—is the object being “bought” via donation. This is of course never the donor’s intention (nor was it our intention at the time), but nevertheless, the model itself mimics the objectification of girls in a way that ran contrary to our values.

CONSENT IS UNCLEAR. In traditional sponsorship programs, girls are expected to share their life story in exchange for access to the program. They often don’t know who will be reading their story or why they’re telling it. For some time, we worked to combat this by getting informed consent from girls, ensuring they knew where their information would be used and why. We also asked our donors to reciprocate and write back to girls. But ultimately, it was only a stop-gap measure: Not all girls wanted to share their stories, and not all donors would reply, underlining a power dynamic that favored the donors.

IT'S AN ADMINISTRATIVE BURDEN. While communicating impact to donors is incredibly important, updating hundreds of profiles is simply not the best use of time, especially for grassroots, resourceconstrained nonprofits. SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

To address these issues and break the mold of a sponsorship model, we implemented the following changes: We update donors on their impact through essays, art, and other projects that girls themselves decide to share with the wider world. Today, girls choose whether and what they’d like to share, and they can focus on the issues that matter most to them, highlighting their knowledge, passions, and leadership. Regional versions of The Girl Gazette, translated where necessary, are available for girls to distribute around their own schools and communities.

We no longer match donors and girls on a 1:1 basis, nor restrict funding to individual girls' scholarships. This is part of our strategy to effectively build stronger ecosystems for girls (explained on page 12).

Our donor collateral reflects our belief that both donors and girls have an equally important role in this movement for gender equity. There isn't a need for sponsorship when each steps up to play their part.

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APPRECIATION Every single She’s the First donor and volunteer of the past 11 years deserves to be on this page! And yet, it is impossible to fit them all. In this limited space, we honor members of our community who have invested at the most significant levels.

Foundations Beatrice & Reymont Paul Foundation The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation The Harnisch Foundation InMaat Foundation Johnson Family Foundation Foundation to Decrease World Suck Muriel F. Siebert Foundation Nina Abrams Fund NoVo Foundation Silicon Valley Community Foundation Summit Foundation Individuals Andrew Zobler Andy & Maria Polansky Ann & Andrew Tisch Daria Foster & Eric Wallach Ed Hajim Gwen Greene & John Greene * Harish & Sarah Nataraj Imaan Hammam The May Day Women Mona Patel Naveen Nataraj Regena Thomashauer Rich & Martha Handler Ruth Benanav & Gary Benanav * Sol Orwell Tara & Riad Abrahams Todd & Valerie Herman Tom Kerns & Jeanmarie Hargrave SHE'S THE FIRST RETROSPECTIVE

Companies and Corporate Foundations Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld American Express Foundation Anthropologie Barbie & the Mattel Foundation Brides for a Cause Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner Cartoon Network Catbird CharityMiles DefineMe Fragrance Dermalogica Dow Jones Foundation Edelman (Lisa Sepulveda) Estée Lauder Companies Charitable Foundation & the Bobbi Brown Pretty Powerful Fund Facebook The Giving Block Glamour's The Girl Project Hotjar Marie Forleo International Nuria PepsiCo Foundation Salesforce The Shakti School Xandr (formerly AppNexus)

Office Space The New York Foundling *deceased

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shesthefirst.org info@shesthefirst.org @shesthefirst

This retrospective was created with the support of Sankofa Consulting as part of a process to refine our strategic goals and to develop a measurement and evaluation plan for the years ahead.