Since early spring, Alyse Nelson, president and CEO of Vital Voices, has served on Gucci’s CHIME FOR CHANGE advisory board. Vital Voices has partnered with the global campaign to share inspiring stories of female leadership. The campaign was founded by Gucci in February 2013 to convene, unite and strengthen the voices speaking out for girls and women around the world with a focus on raising funds and awareness for education, health, and justice projects. Their benefit concert in London earlier this year, “The Sound of Change Live,” raised over $4 million for various projects curated on Catapult and featured BeyoncĢ©, Florence + the Machine, Jennifer Lopez, among other artists.
The projects CHIME FOR CHANGE has funded for Vital Voices include:
- Make laws keep their promises: a program to address the issue of violence against women and to create a holistic, coordinated community response to gender-based violence.
- Invest in women, improve the world: a program to identity, invest, and bring visibility to extradorinary women to help unleash their leadership potential.
- Jewish and Arab advocates for peace: a program to promote peace in Israel by building a network of Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli women leaders committed to social change through advocacy.
Additionally, they recently teamed with Twitter and Women Who Code to present #CHIMEHACK, a hackathon in San Francisco from December 5-7 convening visionary leaders in technology to create mobile app solutions to help support girls and women around the world. There were five winning teams including one whose winning solution was an app for Vital Voices called Sprouts, an application that connects and inspires women leaders by the social experience of sharing stories of female leadership.
Read Fast Company’s article on the hackathon, “Gucci Teams Up with Twitter, Jawbone, and More to Tackle Global Women’s Issues,” and check out Alyse Nelson, Vital Voices’ CEO, featured in the #CHIMEHACK video.
To learn more about the CHIME FOR CHANGE campaign and the girls and women it reaches, visit the campaign’s website, Facebook, and short films.