SDG #4 Quality Education: Cotton On and Girl Up Collaborate to Expand Access for Girls
By +SocialGood Connector Ashley Bass
The Cotton On Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Australia’s largest fashion retailer the Cotton On Group, is collaborating with Girl Up, a United Nations Foundation initiative, for a campaign to support girls’ education. The unique partnership was announced at the Social Good Summit in New York, where the Cotton On Foundation was invited to talk about its projects to empower youth through education programs in Uganda, South Africa, Thailand, and Australia.
Sarah Spiker, COF’s Global Projects Operations Manager, spoke to the importance of educating girls — a key pillar in creating a better world for all of us.
“The Cotton On Foundation is thrilled to be taking the story about our work and mission to the world through the Social Good Summit. Our partnership with Girl Up allows us to further build on the work we are doing to break down the barriers that girls face in accessing quality education,” said Tim Diamond, Cotton On Foundation General Manager.
Cotton On will launch an exclusive range of products it has designed with Girl Up for the ‘Together for Her’ campaign, which will raise funds for girl’s leadership development initiatives in Cotton On Foundation schools in Uganda.
The products include five on-trend illustrations and empowering quotes on tees, totes and water bottles. The collection will be available online and in Cotton On stores globally starting September 23, with 100% of proceeds from the campaign contributing to a Leadership Summit in Uganda for Cotton On Foundation-supported schools and regional Girl Up Clubs.
“We believe in the power of girls. Every girl, no matter her background, can be a leader,” Girl Up Co-Executive Director Melissa Kilby said. “We are proud to partner with Cotton On Foundation to help girls change their communities, and the world,” added Girl Up Co-Executive Director Anna Blue.
Using Girl Up’s signature leadership development model, Cotton On Foundation will pilot the Leadership Summits at selected schools in January 2020. The summits aim to empower young girls through mentoring and peer support to become leaders in their communities and throughout their lives. Since 2007, Cotton On customers have raised almost $100M by taking more than 110 million actions that have changed the lives of tens of thousands of people. Cotton On stores globally sell everyday items where 100% of proceeds are donated to the work of the Foundation.
Sarah Spiker, COF’s Global Projects Operations Manager, spoke about the importance of educating girls — a key pillar in creating a better world for all of us. In our one on one interview Sarah mentioned that Cotton on “has the footprint on the ground in Uganda,across all of their projects, but Girl Up are leaders and know what to do to create dialogue to young people to make change. Cotton On has been really good at focusing on education and getting that right but one of their goals is to ensure that every graduate from one of their schools becomes a contributing citizen and leadership is an important part of that-which is the motivation for the collaboration.
The collaboration will also work towards creating clubs in their schools that will increase access to more student lead activities. Cotton On sees that these clubs will create a great culture in the communities that they work in and that they’re really excited to see what comes of the clubs. Cotton on has already started rolling out clubs in other areas, however when meeting with some of the young women in communities that Cotton On works with, a lot of the young women are saying that they want to be “strong independent women, they want to be leaders in their communities, so with the Girl Up focus they envision that this new club structure will give more support, training and development so young women can fulfill those dreams.
