Building a Legacy of Education, Healing & Impact

Welcome back to another episode of Clear the Screen. I am Melissa Deely,

and I am Billy Adme, and this is where anxiety ends and abundance begins. Welcome to the show.

And today we are doing a special episode in honor of our second book, Empowered: The Journey from Victim Island to Solution City, and talking about Girls Matter because, of course, the whole purpose of this wonderful book is to raise funds for Girls Matter, and every chapter funds one year of a girl's education in Uganda or Kenya, and so our first edition book, we chatted about how Girls Matter got started and the impetus behind that, which, in a nutshell, if you haven't read the book, yes, go buy it on Amazon. It started as a result of me taking my Girl Guides to see a documentary called Girl Rising back in 2013, and as I watched that documentary about girls fighting for the right for an education and being denied it simply based on gender, I had tears streaming down my face because I was in a room of 20 tweens and teens, all girls, who I knew had taken their education for granted at various times, you know, faking being sick so they didn't have to go to school, my two girls included in that room, and myself included. And here were these girls desperate for an education and being denied it simply based on gender. And that was the impetus to me starting Girls Matter because there was two stats there that really resonated with me, and one of those was that if India could educate just 1% more girls, they would grow their GDP by $5.5 billion. So therein lay the solution. Not necessarily easy, however, it makes sense. If you educate the other half of the population, and then they get into the workforce, we grow the GDP of countries and bring countries out of poverty. And so that's where our tagline comes from: breaking the poverty cycle, one girl, one family, one village at a time. And the other stat was that the highest cause of death in girls aged 15 to 19 years old globally is childbirth. And imagine that, because it's not happening in our first-world countries, which means it's happening at such crazy high levels in our

developing countries that it's impacting that stat at a global level, and we want to bring that to an end. And, you know, families don't necessarily want to be marrying their children, their daughters off in their teenage years. It's simply comes down to finances and can they afford to feed them. And when they can't, they get married off. And so, by us funding education for these girls, it's more than education that they get. They get their accommodation. They get their meals. They get their school uniforms. They get their healthcare. They get their mosquito nets, and they get their education, which

That leads to them getting their freedom and their future as well.

Exactly. It's all about empowering them, which, as you know, Amplify Impact Academy and all of the work that Billy and I do is about empowering you in order to be able to know how your mind works, use the tools, and live your best life, and our give back is Girls Matter. And so that is how we started Girls Matter. So now we want to update you on what we've been doing over this past year and how our girls have grown and developed during the course of this year. So, last year we left off having talked about Evelyn having been come a seamstress and then got full-time work in the textile industry in Kenya, and then being able to send money home to Uganda. And this year we started out the year with really exciting news that one of our graduates from Uganda had been accepted into a job and internship opportunity in Liberia. And so Peninah in early February got on a plane. You know, this is a girl that grew up on the side of a mountain in a little, tiny village that the closest town is called Sironko and not even marked on most Google Maps, and then the closest big city is Mbale, and here she is, having the courage to say yes to this opportunity that she was connected with through Girls Matter, and go and get on not just one plane, two planes to move from eastern Africa in Uganda over to western Africa in Liberia, and start her new life there and her new role. And I'm so proud of her for the courage that it takes for someone with her background to say yes to that, to step into this opportunity. And it started, you know, a little bit rocky. And yet, it has turned out so well. So initially, when she started, she was hired into a position of logistics because that was her degree. And once she got there, her employer determined that she didn't actually have the skill set for the job in terms of the computer skills, because at her university in Uganda, they hadn't used computers. And so she first needed to go into a training program, which

fortunately her employer had set up already for other students, and she started learning how to use Microsoft, how to use Excel, how to do Google searches, how to create Google Docs, etc. And she thrived. It was a great online program with mentors, and in just a matter of months, she was very proficient in computers. And guess what? Over the summer, she was hired to create an app in Liberia that would help connect people to more medical resources, to save people having to go to overcrowded hospitals just for a small medical checkup, and instead being able to use an app to connect with a doctor locally, have a doctor come to their house, and in many cases eliminate the need of stressful travel to overcrowded hospitals to be looked at. And in some cases, of course, there might still need to be a hospital visit. So Peninah is coordinating the programming group and the project management group and using all of her logistic skills, her new computer skills, in order to bring this app to fruition. And then beyond that, in the fall, she's actually secured a job at a local school as a support teacher, and she's interviewed with them, and that is actually where her heart's desire is. So it's wonderful to see her get into that line of work. Because remember that thing in 2020 that we all know, the pandemic and the world shut down? What happened was Peninah had to actually change her degree at that point. She had wanted to go into teaching or nursing. She was in nursing, and because of the pandemic, she couldn't do labs. And so she decided to change her degree so that she wasn't held up in graduating, and she changed it to a course that didn't have any labs that she could do entirely online. And that's how she ended up in logistics. And what we've since learned is her heart is really in service, in helping others, in helping children, and this opportunity to work at a school has come up, and as a result, that is now what Peninah will be doing as of September this

year.

And with that, and with our partnership with Nell, her mentor in Liberia, we are now also able to be expanding into Liberia and supporting girls education in Liberia, which we are announcing here for the very first time. It's super, super exciting. And that's also thank you to all of the people that have purchased our books, to all of the authors that have been part of this book, in order to have the funds in order to be able to expand into a new region and help more girls, which is ultimately what we want to be doing. And I'm going to hand it over to Billie to share more wonderful news in how we will continue to be able to expand and support Girls Matter.

I mean, so much has happened in this past year not just for Girls Matter and how we're expanding there. I mean, we have personally and professionally been expanding to such a degree that, you know, we're we're hanging on, right? And it's super exciting, you know, as much as there's a lot of chaos in the world right now, you know, there's a lot of goodness that's happening around us as well. And you know, one of the premises that we teach is, you know, focus on what you want because that's what you get. And, you know, it's so easy to focus on all the negative stuff that's happening in the world, and how can we, you know, focus on on the positivity and all these like stories like this where, you know, a girl that would never have left the side of this mountain is now flying on planes and going and, you know, making an impact in the world? And as you know, our middle name is Impact, and, you know, at Amplifyou Impact Academy, our mission is to, you know, really amplify our light in the world. And through that whole process, we have also now expanded into another company that we have just launched with another partner, and it's called Impact Maker Alliance. And really, the premise of it is, you know, when we have a light, a lot of us, our lights are dimmed. And, for example, you know, a lot of the girls out in Africa that we help, you know, their lights are dimmed for whatever reasons they are. And sometimes we just need to help someone access their light again. And so, if you think of the analogy that if I have a candle, if I use my candle that's lit to light someone else's candle, it doesn't dim my light. In fact, it just amplifies it. And that's the premise of this Impact Maker Alliance is how can we come together in an alliance, in collaboration, in teamwork that we can share our light together? And that's really what this program is all about, this initiative, this I'm calling it a revolution or evolution, however you want to name it, this

renaissance of how we really show up in the world. And, you know, we know we can see through the chaos that the old systems are falling, and there's a new era that's coming. And the new era is the impact economy. And that means how do we serve in the world, not just how do we make money in the world? You know, at at our academy, we always say that let money be the a symbol of the your service in the world. So, the more you serve, the more you show up for people, not just yourself—you have to show up for yourself first, right? That's the whole analogy of you've got to put your own mask on first before you can help others. Through our trainings, that's what we help people do is first uncover their own light, and then go out and share it in the world. And so, this this alliance now that we have created, we are literally bringing on partners into this we're calling like this mothership of light. I guess we'll just call it that, this mothership of light where we are going to come together and bring our gifts, bring our resources, bring our wisdom and all the skills that we each have. Everybody has gifts that they have been given, we just have to learn how to access them. And then, how do we take those and actually go out into the world and really make an impact, which is what it's all about. And part of that program is that we're actually bringing Girls Matter into that. So, it's not going to just be what Melissa and I are doing at the academy, it's now going to be a global initiative.

As you know, we want to, you know, expand Girls Matter globally so that, you know, we don't it's not just us doing it and the people on our board, that it's actually so many people out there, and beyond just the authors of this book, that however you want to make an impact, now we have the systems, we have the structure, we have the business piece to it because a lot of people want to make an impact out there, they just don't know how. You know, they are listening to that little voice inside their head saying, There must be more to life. There's a lot of that happening on the planet right now. It's happened to us, right? When, Melissa, you left corporate, I've, you know, now left law enforcement, that that little voice that says, You're made for more. There's more gifts that you have in the world, and that's what we're unlocking with these beautiful girls in Africa, and not just in Africa, everywhere, right? Everybody on the planet has gifts, and unfortunately some of us are born into environments that don't really support that. And we're lucky and we're blessed to have so many resources available to us, and now how can we bring those together to help those that want to start, say, a coaching business, they just don't know how, right? It's a lot of work to start a business, the, with the, you know, the CRMs, and the funnels, and the workflow, and the, and the social media, and the marketing, and there's so much to it that if we can provide a platform for people to just to come and be like, I want to be part of it, sign me up, and here's all what you need, now go out there and make an impact in the world. And as you're doing that, part of your impact is now going to help Girls Matter grow. So it we just launched it literally yesterday softly to our our community, and now we're actually launching it on the International Woo Day on September 22nd, 2023, because that's another massive initiative that Melissa and I are going to be part of is this documentary that

is, again, all about this. How do we bring all these beautiful modalities that there are so many people in the world doing, and make it mainstream, and not make it woo, right? Let's not make it, oh it's, you know, the woo-woo stuff. It's like, you know, the all those spiritual people, you know, what's what they're doing. We know the power of our minds. We know the power of the energetics of the universe that we are not tapping into, not even a little bit. And so our capacity literally is limitless, however, we just need to learn how to access it. And so this documentary is opening where we're starting another new project, where we are going to go on tour and actually share this from the stage. and it's just going to result in that much more capacity for us to make a difference. And we're also going to be launching our foundation, the One Match Foundation, which is going to provide scholarships for people out there. For me, I have a soft spot for single moms and, you know, victims of domestic violence. From my policing career, I've seen there were women are just stuck, and they just need a way out, and that foundation is going to provide scholarships for women or anybody really, to apply to get a scholarship to take our trainings, to again go out there and make an impact. So there's so much happening. I mean, we're super excited. The energetics, the planetary alignments, everything is here, ready for us to launch. And, you know, if you're hearing this and you're like, That sounds like something I want to be part of, please reach out to us. We don't have all the details and all the answers. We just know that we're ready to really amplify impact in the world on a massively global, galactic scale, and if it's something that sings to you, please reach out.

Whether you want to be an author in the book, or you want to be involved in Girls Matter, or you want to be involved in the Impact Maker Alliance, there will be a place for you and a way for you to to volunteer your your resources, whether it's time, whether it's your energy, whether it's your money, whether it's your gifts, your skills, there's a way for you to get involved. So please reach out if this sings to you.

And so, as you listen to this episode, think about who in your life might have created a spark for you that took you to wherever you're at now. And who can you now do that for? By sharing this episode, by sharing this work that we are up to in the world. And as Billie said earlier, you know, there's a lot of chaos in the world right now, and people are feeling stuck, confused, and down. And just sharing this episode with all of the opportunities that we're creating here can give people the spark that they need to know that there is hope in the world, that there is goodness in the world. And so please share this episode with them, because as you do that, you are sharing the light. And as Billie also said earlier, when we spark one match, it doesn't diminish anything. Instead, it expands the light, because we are stronger together, sharing the light. The

light is always stronger together. That is such a beautiful concept when you think about it, that, you know, doesn't matter how dark it is, even one candle can shed some light on it. And imagine when there's a room full of candles and sparks. And that's what we're wanting to do, is light these sparks all over the planet, because it's contagious.

That it is. And if you're interested in participating in the book, in getting involved in any of what we're doing, just check all of the information in the show notes and how to reach out to us. And come back and listen to our next episode next week.