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Chime for Change Partners with Global Citizen

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When two mega-successful organizations come together to fight the same battle, the win is almost inevitable. The win against global poverty will be slow and steady, but quite sweet.

Earlier this month, Chime for Change and Global Citizen announced their partnership to develop a campaign dedicated to ending global poverty by 2030, in alignment with the United Nations’ timeline for the Sustainable Development Goals. The campaign will create major change for girls and women around the world.

Chime for Change is a global campaign itself, designed to empower women by raising money and awareness for women’s issues. Founded in 2013 by superwomen Beyoncé Knowles and Salma Hayek, the campaign provides a stable and united voice for the voiceless by focusing on education, health and justice for girls all around the world.

Global Citizen is an extension of the Global Poverty Project, created by Ryan Gall and Riot House in 2012. As an online platform, Global Citizen educates its community through informative articles and shares ways to take action in the fight against poverty. It focuses on health, education, sustainability and women’s rights.

In their mission to eradicate global poverty, Chime for Change and Global Citizen hope to use their partnership to raise awareness about the hardships women in poverty face every day. Together, they promote gender equality, a primary factor in ending global poverty.

Global Citizen will provide Chime for Change with a well-read platform to connect with millions of people around the world. On globalcitizen.org, Chime for Change will have the opportunity to present information about women’s issues and encourage others to support women and girls around the world.

This September, Chime for Change will be a presenter at the 2015 Global Citizen Festival in New York City, where Queen Bey will run the show as a headliner. Together, Chime for Change and Global Citizen will bring new opportunities to girls and women, helping them live sustainably and poverty-free lives.

– Sarah Sheppard

Sources: Chime For Change, Bustle, Global Citizen
Photo: TGIF Guide

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Chime for Change

chime for change
Haute fashion house Gucci held a benefit on June 3 at its Manhattan location on 5th Avenue in honor of its charity program, Chime for Change. Many influential celebrities were in supportive attendance such as Beyonce and actress Blake Lively. The event celebrated the charity’s first anniversary, marking a year of explosive growth and international charitable influence.

Chime for Change is a charity and international women’s empowerment and awareness campaign sponsored by Gucci, cofounded by Salma Hayek Pinault, Beyonce Knowles-Carter and Frida Giannini, Gucci’s creative director. The campaign is partnered with charity powerhouses such as the Kering Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Facebook, Catapult, Twitter, Hearst Magazines and Kellogg’s.

Gucci pledged to donate $1 million in proceeds from its global perfume sales; Gucci fragrance customers can donate $5 from each purchase to various projects, charities and organizations supporting justice, health or education for women and young girls. It also set up an official Chime for Change website, through which direct donations to the latter programs can be collected online. The campaign is partnered with Catapult, which connects donors and volunteers directly to over 50 organizations throughout 38 countries worldwide.

These organizations are primarily focused upon the formerly mentioned goals of female education, justice and health; the program has thus far contributed significantly to these programs, and its progress is meticulously recorded online at Chimeforchange.org/impact-report. For example, the program provided enough funding for midwives in Cambodia to reduce the country’s high rate of maternal deaths during childbirth. It has also nearly completed gathering the funding necessary to both create homes for young girls in India and provide free, sanitary cesarean sections to impoverished women at the St. Damien Hospital in Haiti (a nation in which one in 10 mothers die during childbirth.)

Another page of the website tracks donation progress by percentage for various exigent causes, such as providing health services for 35 rescued victims of human trafficking at a time and funding peer education in Spain to prevent female genital mutilation, which affects over 100 million children globally.

Chime for Change makes it simple for customers around the world to easily contribute to many influential causes worldwide; it represents a meaningful and influential step towards alleviating world poverty.

– Arielle Swett

Sources: Chime for Change, Huffington Post, Catapult
Photo: Closet On The Go

Fashion Fights for Rights

Fashion Fights for Rights
Fashion fights for rights. In April, a factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing over one thousand female seamstresses. The event brought women’s rights to the surface of many discussions. To raise awareness, the women’s empowerment initiative Chime for Change organized an event sponsored by Gucci called Sound of Change Live, focusing on fashion, music, women, and how they can intertwine. The concert featured many women’s rights advocates including Jennifer Lopez, Madonna and Beyonce, to promote women’s rights to education, health, and justice.

About 50,000 fans attended the concert in person, and an estimated one billion more watched online to see how fashion fights for rights. The concert featured an interactive Twitter feed asking viewers’ opinions throughout the performance, which helped the event go viral. Sound of Change Live raised awareness of important women’s issues like domestic violence and education and was also able to raise $4 million for Chime for Change.

Sometimes the support of celebrities is necessary for action in places like Pakistan, where the voices and opinions of pop icons can grab the attention of the nation’s youth. Ultimately, more good is done once celebrity advocates for change because more people become aware of and get involved in the world’s most pressing issues.

– Katie Brockman

Source New York Times

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The Sound of Change Concert featuring Beyonce and Women Empowerment

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Chime for Change is throwing a huge concert that will elicit large crowds because of the musical artists performing. Those who have the privilege of attending The Sound of Change concert on June 1, 2013 in London will see and hear performances by Beyonce, a member of the Chime for Change founding committee, John Legend, Florence and the Machine, Ellie Goulding, Iggy Azalea, Timbaland, Laura Pausini, and Rita Ora.

However, the driving force behind this concert is not the showcasing of musical talents or putting on a great show but rather raising funds and bringing attention to problems plaguing women globally, especially in the areas of health, education, and justice. In between the musical performances, attention will be directed towards women’s issues and personal stories of women across the globe. In addition to drawing attention to the issues,the Chime for Change organization and Gucci are ensuring that all proceeds from ticket sales are given to nonprofit organizations that are helping empower women.

Chime for Change is an organization founded by Gucci that brings together the voices of women across the globe to create discussion and raise funds and awareness for girls’ and women’s empowerment. In bringing this concert to London, as well as broadcasting it online for people all over the world to view, Chime for Change is putting girls’ and women’s issues on a world stage. Discussion of these issues are sure to occur as the result of this concert, which is one of the main points of the Chime for Change campaign. According to Ariana Huffington, an advisory board member of Chime for Change, as well as the Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, the organization “brings together a range of voices, from women’s advocates and experts to business leaders and philanthropists” working to make girls’ and women’s issues a top priority.

Mixing fashion (Gucci) and charity work seems to be a winning combination. The Sound of Change concert will surely draw a large crowd and bring issues plaguing  girls and women everywhere to the front and center.

– Angela Hooks
Sources: Elle, Huffington Post

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Beyoncé is Helping Girls Run the World

Beyoncé is Helping Girls Run the WorldWho runs the world? According to a very popular song of Beyoncé’s, girls do.

And now to show just how much she believes that Beyoncé has partnered with the clothing brand Gucci, as well as famous superstars such as Salma Hayek, Adrianna Huffington, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, and Jada Pinket-Smith to start a campaign called Chime for Change. The Chime for Change Campaign is, as written by Vogue.com’s Sarah Karmali, an initiative that aims to raise funds for and awareness about supporting the projects of girls and women worldwide “through sharing ‘powerful stories’ about inspiring females.”

By sharing different women’s stories, the Chime for Change Campaign wants to strengthen and unite all the voices speaking out for women and girls across the globe with hopes of, as stated on TED (a nonprofit that brings together thinkers, philanthropists, and doers), “raising an alarm and drawing attention where there is work to be done – with a focus on Education, Health and Justice.”

The campaign – thought up by Salma Hayek and Gucci Creative Director, Frida Giannini – will feature a series of ten films that highlight the power of technology and tell inspiring stories of women across the world. Each film will be narrated by Hayek and will feature new music by Beyoncé. The first film has already been released and in it, Salma Hayek praises the advent of technology for helping connect women and girls in ways that were previously unimaginable. The video goes on to show how change that creates equality for women, gives girls everywhere the opportunity to go to school and provides women access to the care they need is occurring and necessary for improving not only communities but the whole world.

The optimistic message of the video, as well as celebrity appearances (both Salma Hayek and Beyoncé appear in the first video), is encouraging, not only to the future success of the campaign but also to the importance of what technology can do. It shows how technology can connect people everywhere and bring attention to empowering stories across the globe.

Click here to watch the first video.

– Angela Hooks

Sources: Huffington Post, TED
Photo: Chime for Change