Only 30 percent of women in Kenya have the chance to go to college. As most employment opportunities require a college degree, this leaves many women at a disadvantage, and more prone to exploitation and a lifetime of poverty. For orphaned girls like Wendy Nzula, this scenario adds to the barriers she must already overcome to achieve her dreams and become independent. While charities and development organizations have helped a growing number of disadvantaged girls in Kenya obtain a secondary education, a majority still face unemployment and a lack of financial support to go to college after graduating from high school.

In 2006, Linda Lockhart founded the Global Give Back Circle (GGBC) initiative to reverse this trend. In 2008, she partnered with ATEBank of Greece, Equity Bank Kenya, Microsoft, and the Kenyan Community Development Foundation (KCDF) to take the GGBC initiative to the next level. Lockhart and her partners committed to successfully transition 35 disadvantaged girls in Kenya from high school to college and employment by launching a comprehensive mentoring and educational program.

CGI recently spoke to Lockhart, who is managing director of the GGBC and global director at the Cohen Brown Management Group, to learn more about this CGI commitment.

Q. How would you describe your commitment, and what inspired you to engage in this effort?

A. In 2005, I listened to a webcast of a compelling speech President Clinton made at CGI’s Annual Meeting, in which he highlighted the need to embrace a new model of global citizenship. This convinced and encouraged me to find a way to leverage my management consulting experience with the Cohen Brown Management Group to address the plight of disadvantaged girls in Africa. In 2006, I founded the GGBC to address what I felt was a critical gap in development that has left marginalized women in Kenya paralyzed against the inequalities they face.

Made up of five different phases, the GGBC can be seen as an “empowerment process” during which girls in high school develop a strong relationship with a mentor who guides them in planning for their future while they engage in activities that increase their participation in society and access to employment opportunities. Working closely with local communities, GGBC embraces a “give back” ethos, whereby the girls themselves design and engage in their own Commitments to Action that address the needs of their communities. This approach enables them to design and launch their own sustainable projects that will help other disadvantaged girls in Kenya. President Clinton’s book Giving played a very influential role in this process, inspiring the GGBC girls to give back to their communities. Today, the GGBC operates at the following schools: Starehe, St. Martin’s, and Blessed Generation.

Q. How did you develop this idea and the key partnerships that support it?

A. While developing the GGBC, I also recognized the value of applying my own business expertise to design a model that could be successful and sustainable. Over time, a group of 10 women have joined me in GGBC’s work, creating a global network of more than 120 mentors for the GGBC girls. My partners and I used the word “circle” to describe the project, as it reflects a movement that perpetuates itself. Initially, we believed this circle needed only two components: girls and mentors. However, we soon realized that support from local community and financial partners was also critical. For instance, in addition to empowering women, we wanted to create a financial support system that would ensure disadvantaged girls could go to college by covering the costs of everything from soap to Shakespeare, thereby giving them a greater chance of getting a job after school.

Q. How will the Global Give Back Circle help these girls break free from poverty?

A. One of the unique characteristics of this project is its focus on the “how” component. We strongly wanted to initiate a viable and concrete process that could reach its objectives and avoid raising false hopes among marginalized girls. By leveraging the support of local communities and financial partners — as well as our own business expertise — the GGBC initiative empowers disadvantaged girls and helps them gain access to an “enabling” environment that will guarantee their transition from high school to college and employment.

The story of Wendy Nzula clearly demonstrates this. Losing her parents at a very young age, Wendy, along with her brother and sister, were left homeless on the streets of Nairobi after her uncles sold her parents’ possessions and neglected to take care of them. With the help of charities, Wendy had the chance to go to Starehe Girl’s Center to get a secondary education. One of the most accomplished students in her class, Wendy dreams of becoming a lawyer and taking a leadership role in Kenya. With the help of the GGBC initiative, she will have the chance to pursue this dream, and for the first time, live a life filled with hope and happiness.

Q. What challenges or difficulties have you encountered?

A. Finding good mentors is always challenging. We rely on current mentors to refer friends who are interested in joining our initiative. However, our biggest challenge was finding the finances to cover the girls’ college tuition costs. We knew that if we didn’t find the funds to transition our first class of 35 girls from high school graduation into college and meaningful careers, these girls would be extremely disappointed and fall right back into poverty.

However, on September 9, 2008, we went to CGI’s 2008 Annual Meeting. In New York City, I arrived at CGI armed with 35 letters from our GGBC girls and photos that told the whole GGBC story, as well as a financial model that clearly outlined the transitioning process and detailed the costs for each of the girls.

At CGI, we had the honor of meeting Governor Dimitris Miliakos, the CEO and chairman of ATEbank, Greece. He was deeply moved by the girls’ stories and committed to financially support 30 of them in their transition to college. When Dr. James Mwangi, the CEO of Equity Bank, Kenya, heard the good news, he committed to transition the remaining five. Microsoft also committed to develop computer labs at the schools where the girls are attending high school to equip them with key skills and enable them to be certified as Official Microsoft Office Users. The construction of the Starehe Lab was recently completed on March 10, 2009.

To learn more about the stories of the 35 girls participating in the GGBC initiative, visit www.globalgivebackcircle.org.