A presentation at school does not have to take months of planning or even be stressful. All you need is a supportive teacher, a few friends and the drive to help a girl who does not have many opportunities.

Hi! I am Omar Terrones, a member of the Girl Up club at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, CA with Teen Advisor Rocio Ortega. I was one of the first few people, as well as the first and only boy to join the club back in its inception.

Marlborough's Girl Up Club hosted its very first fundraiser event Sunday, February 5. It's fair to say that it was a success on all accounts!

Picture this: your name is Fatuma, and you are a fourteen year old girl living in Todee, Liberia. Your brother is allowed to go to school and you aren’t, even though you desperately want to go to university and become a doctor. While American girls like me have the same dreams as Fatuma does, she simply does not have the resources to pursue her goals.

When I was eight years old, my friends and I built a fort in my backyard and proudly displayed a sign reading “NO Boys Allowed!” Today, girls around the world are facing serious issues and we need boys to be part of the solution, too.

A few months ago, I started to think about what it meant to turn 18 years old. I couldn’t believe that I would be an adult! I thought about all my dreams, friends, family, and successes that I’ve had in my life. I can happily say that I have fulfilled almost all of my childhood dreams (except a few, including becoming a Disney princess). I also thought about all my aspirations for the future: to go to college, to get a job, to fall in love, and to have a family.

Nearly 50 percent of Uganda’s population is under the age of 15, and mobile technology is offering them huge opportunities to access information and connect globally. That's why we teamed up with Villages In Action (VIA) to virtually connect with young girls in Kikuube Village, Uganda. VIA is a program dedicated to giving the people in the villages a voice in the global community.

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated the country of Haiti.  Today, the second anniversary of the earthquake, is a good reminder to remember the girls and women who have been affected. Currently, there are about 800 camps and half a million people still displaced, many of them girls and women. 

I had such a great experience in New York with United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up campaign and Clean & Clear! My day started out exciting and ended spectacular!

Last week, I held the event that I had been dreaming about since I first applied to become a Teen Advisor. My friends entered the room bursting with excitement. First, they bought raffle tickets then wrote encouraging letters to girls in Malawi, Ethiopia, Liberia and Guatemala. They had the opportunity to meet and take a picture with our celebrity host, “Glee” cast member Max Adler.

It was about 8:15 in the morning and New York City and its residents seemed to adjust groggily to the fact a new day had begun. Coffee in hand, I walked past a structure that stands so proudly over New York’s East River.

On December 6, I had the amazing opportunity to speak at a Girl Up reception in Atlanta! A special thanks to the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and the Atlanta Girls’ School for hosting us.

I attended a breakfast on behalf of Girl Up at the United Nations to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The breakfast room was filled with supporters for elimination of violence against women, and the excitement to celebrate the four winners of the Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence Against Women t-shirt design contest was everywhere.

Finally the day that the Garfield High School Girl Up Club had been planning for had arrived! On Wednesday, November 16, the members of the GHS Girl Up club came to school at 6:30 a.m. to set up for the assembly.

This holiday season, Girl Up is working with you to change the lives of 2,000 girls in the Jijiga refugee camp in Ethiopia, run by UNHCR. While these girls have fled their homes in Somalia to escape conflict and famine, the reality of life in a regufee camp means they need our help more than ever.

Everyday I’m inspired by the work I do for the United Nations Foundation, but today I was completely blown away: Girl Up and Project Girl Performance Collective participated in TEDxWomen’s global conversation on the importance of women and girls! This incredible group of teens rocked the stage at the Paley Center in New York as part of a global event, with speakers in two cities and more than 100 organized viewing conferences around the world

As the holiday season approaches, all of us here at Girl Up are realizing how many great things we have in our lives. So in celebration of the American holiday Thanksgiving, we’ve all come up with a list of things we’re thankful for.

As the holiday season approaches, all of us here at Girl Up are realizing how many great things we have in our lives. So in celebration of the American holiday Thanksgiving, we’ve all come up with a list of things we’re thankful for.

As the holiday season approaches, all of us here at Girl Up are realizing how many great things we have in our lives. So in celebration of the American holiday Thanksgiving, we’ve all come up with a list of things we’re thankful for.

We were delighted to welcome the United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up Unite for Girls tour to our headquarters. I don’t think we’d ever had so many fabulous young women here at once!

As the holiday season approaches, all of us here at Girl Up are realizing how many great things we have in our lives. So in celebration of the American holiday Thanksgiving, we’ve all come up with a list of what we’re thankful for.

San Francisco prides herself on many things: the crooked streets, the Golden Gate Bridge, authentic Chinatown, rich galleries, organic food, colorful people, and now, an outstanding Unite for Girls Tour!

Everybody has the right to live free from violence. Yet millions of girls and women across the world are denied this right. In every region and in every country, rich or poor, in times of peace and war, girls and women suffer disproportionately from violence, simply because they are born female.

Just moments before we kicked off our Unite for Girls San Francisco Tour, the Teen Advisors anxiously took their positions. They met for the first time this weekend and bonded over cookies, cracked jokes, and settled into their roles as the new representatives of Girl Up.

Ever stop to think about all the people who helped you along the way? I bet there’s a long list — family, teachers, friends, band members, soccer teammates, religious leaders and more. All of these people help us get through tough times.