How To Use Social Media And Savvy Marketing To Raise Funds For Girls Education Around The Globe: The Story of ShesTheFirst

Katrina: So here I am with Tammy Tibbetts, Founder of ShesTheFirst. Thanks so much for joining, Tammy.

Introducing ShesTheFirst…

Tammy: We started out as a media campaign. Our mission is dedicated to educating girls, specifically in the developing world and giving them opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise.

On our website you can find the directory of international 501c3 non-profits that have programs where you can sponsor a girl’s education. So through our social media and our marketing, we’re trying to appeal to young women, and show them they can make a huge difference, just by giving a little if they bring together their vast networks of friends.

Katrina: Why a focus on girls education?

Tammy: It started with the MacDella Cooper Foundation, and that’s where I was first exposed to the value of sponsorship programs and education in transforming the lives of abandoned children and orphans. MacDella Cooper Foundation does that service in Liberia.

I’ve always been personally interested in women and girls through media, through magazines and online. My day job is at Hearst Digital Media where I run DonateMyDress.org and work with Seventeen.com. But I think it was also just, reading Nicholas Kristof, my favorite journalist. And research that was done in the non-profit field, especially by the Nike Foundation, which produced the Girl Effect PSA that I found to be so powerful: showing that when you educate girls they’ll obviously make more money and get better jobs, and they re-invest that back into their families and the community.

How did travel abroad influence your desire to start ShesTheFirst?

Katrina: You shared with me offline a little bit about your travel experience in Liberia and how that influenced the idea to start ShesTheFirst. Can you tell us a little bit about your travels in Liberia?

Tammy: Yeah, I’ve been to Liberia twice. And when I was there I would meet with the local children who we sent to local schools. There’s one young woman, in particular, whose name is Cynthia, and I am very proud of her because she’s graduating from high school this June. And we’ll see her on through her college education.

She’s actually from a remote village in Liberia, but she’s living in the capital of Monrovia with her grandmother so she can go to a good school that we pay her tuition for. And she wants to become a nurse so that she can move back to where she comes from, the rural community, and be their first female nurse.

Katrina: How much does a scholarship cost?

Tammy: It’s US$200 – US$300 on average (a year), I find in all of our partners. Haiti Outreach Program, a hundred dollars will send a girl to primary school for a year.

And then there are some tuitions like the Kisa Project is US$1,000 a year, but look at what you’re getting – a secondary school education, with a very high-tech digital storytelling and computer training.

Boarding schools like the Shanti Bhavan School in India are again in the thousand dollar range. Those options you can donate either a portion of a tuition towards a girl or if you’re having a larger scale event on a college campus, or in the city like Girls Who Rock, it’s a very attainable fundraising goal.

Katrina: How did you develop this model for ShesTheFirst? What opportunity did you see that wasn’t being served by existing non-profits organizations?

Tammy: I think the light bulb went off in my head when I was on the founding team of DonateMyDress.org at Hearst Digital Media, because I saw, that’s a media campaign, and we’re an umbrella for all of these dress drive organizations. And I saw the power you get when you take all of these smaller organizations that share a similar mission. And, team up with a celebrity spokesperson, design an attractive website, leverage the PR power of Seventeen Magazine and other publications. It was just a huge success.

And I thought, what if I took that structure and that concept of using really savvy marketing, digital media, and video PSAs, and target a message of supporting girls education. And, would I have similar success? And it turns out that we are, we’re growing so fast because young women identify with the ShesTheFirst brand, and what it means that when you have an education you can break barriers. And we’re here because we had an education, and now we have this tremendous desire to pay it forward.

Katrina: How do you find your partners?

Tammy: DoSomething.org. That’s how I found out about Maggie Doyne (Founder of Kopila Valley Children’s Home in Nepal). That’s how I found out about AfricAid. Another program is in Kenya which we’re about to add to our directory. And what’s so exciting about that is that these non-profits were launched by young people, young women!

But now we’re getting to a point with our brand awareness that non-profits are finding us. And we just got an email last week from an executive director of a non-profit that works in Sudan.

Katrina: How did you become interested in international development?

Tammy: I really didn’t get involved in international affairs or have an interest in it until I was a senior in college and fatefully, mistakenly stumbled upon the story of MacDella Cooper as a reporting assignment. That just opened up a whole new world to me. And that’s when I started reading Nicholas Kristof more.

And I think that’s what ShesTheFirst gives me a great platform to do. Like, no I’m not writing and reporting articles each day on the lead of the who, what, where, why, when, and you know, what’s going on. But this brings me back to the power of a story. And even in a more exciting way, because when we work with the Kisa Project we will be communicating with the girl who will be sponsored. And we’ll be transferring that relationship with her onto our blog. So that everyone who comes to the concert will be able to see her growth over the span of two years that she’s in the Kisa Project.

Katrina: Can you share with us, what is the Kisa Project, and what is this concert called Girls Who Rock in New York?

Tammy: Girls Who Rock is wonderful benefit concert, featuring really successful, established artists who are all donating their time. We have Kat DeLuna; Shontelle who is tearing up the iTunes and MySpace charts right now; Mozella – her songs have been in commercials and favorite shows like Greys Anatomy; Lenka, this international sensation who is becoming a big hit on the Sony label here in the U.S.; Cara Salimando, Kelli Pyle.

And we’re bringing them all together on one stage. And ticket prices are very affordable, US$20 and US$50. That’s important to me because I think that fancy galas that start at US$200, that’s very unattainable for young people who are just starting out in their first job, and I want this to be very accessible.

And the Kisa Project makes perfect sense to be our first beneficiary because, first, it was started by Ashley Shuyler, Founder of AfricAid, who is now twenty five years old and that shows that there are no limits to what you can do. You can come to a concert to support the cause, or you could build schools in Africa if you wanted to. You know, age is not going to stop you.

Katrina: How are you using social media to promote your event?

Tammy: We’re going to be tweeting all during this concert. You know, that’s how we’re marketing it. We’re going to have video, its going to be live streamed so even if you’re not in New York City you can be a part of it. And the Kisa Project, that’s what it’s founded on – digital storytelling. And the whole event is during Internet Week New York.

So, all around, it’s a great story about Elizabeth, the young girl in the Kisa Project program who will receive a scholarship thanks to this benefit concert. It’s a great story about Ashley and starting AfricAid and the Kisa Project. And ultimately, it’s a great story about New York City and young people coming together and using social media and digital media to change the world.

Thank you Tammy for your generosity of time to meet for this interview.

Tammy Tibbetts | Founder, ShesTheFirst

About: ShesTheFirst is a media campaign that uses the power of social media and savvy marketing to support the education of girls worldwide. Website: www.ShesTheFirst.org

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