Alexis Teixeira
Guest Writer

Like many Staples students, there are mornings when I wake up and wish that I didn’t have to go to school. I can assure you that this would never happen in a place like Kenya because girls end their education at a very early age or don’t get the opportunity to get an education at all.

A new club at Staples called Teen Vital Voices is trying to change that.

Teen Vital Voices is the first teenage chapter of Vital Voices Global Partnership, a non-governmental organization (“NGO”) that was founded by Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright. The organization’s mission is to identify, invest in, and train extraordinary women around the world. This organization has helped trained over 8,000 women who have in turn gone on to teach or train 500,000 women and children.

Teen Vital Voices’ vision is to increase leadership skills among group members and to partner with the Kakenya Center of Excellence, which is a boarding school for girls in Kenya.

Teen Vital Voices was founded by freshman Alexis Teixeira in the fall of 2009. Although this club is in its infancy, they have brought in many guest speakers, have decorated t-shirts to send to the girls in Kenya, and have raised enough money to send four Kenyan girls to school for a year.

For more information you can visit www.vitalvoices.org or www.kakenyasdream.org or you can contact Alexis Teixeira at [email protected].