Former First Lady Michelle Obama has never stopped advocating for women and girls around the globe to live their best lives, and for her most recent action for Giving Tuesday, she backed it all up with a large donation.
Obama has had a pretty incredible 2019.
She was named the world’s most admired woman in a survey by YouGov, Time named her one of the year’s most influential people, and her memoir, Becoming , was a runaway hit, breaking records for sales and earning her a Grammy nomination for the audiobook.
But she isn’t hoarding all that success for herself.
For Giving Tuesday, Obama announced she would be donating more than $500,000 in proceeds from merchandise related to her memoir to support girls’ education around the globe through the Girls Opportunity Alliance.
“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,” a statement from Obama read. “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.”
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The Girls Opportunity Alliance is one of Obama’s own initiatives, set up in 2018 through The Obama Foundation.
The fund supports adolescent girls’ education worldwide. “When adolescent girls around the world are educated, amazing things start to happen,” its GoFundMe reads. “Poverty goes down, economies grow, families get stronger, babies are born healthier, and the world, by all accounts, gets better.
“We are providing a platform for grassroots leaders to seek funding for projects to help break down the physical, cultural, and financial barriers that keep girls from getting an education and fulfilling their potential.”
Obama says her 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.”
She and a few special guests, including Julia Roberts and Jenna Bush Hager, will be traveling to Vietnam to “meet with local girls education organizations and beneficiaries of programs that help adolescent girls reach their full potential through education,” People reported.
h/t: Yahoo!