‘Girl Power’ Takes On New Meaning

Asenath Andrews is interviewed at the Women in the World summit in New York, 2012. (Marc Bryan-Brown)

Asenath Andrews is interviewed at the Women in the World summit in New York, 2012. (Marc Bryan-Brown)

These women have built social networks, developed schools, and designed energy-generating soccer balls. What global issues are these Mothers of Invention tackling next?

When it comes to ingenuity, these women have a motherlode.

What’s a mother of invention? Answer, a woman who sees a social problem and decides to use her own ingenuity and dynamism to try and fix it—and then was lucky enough to win the attention of Toyota. For the past three years, the inspiring stories of these resourceful women have punctuated the Women in the World Summit, the three-day conference at Lincoln Center which unites global women leaders, artists, activists, organizers, and innovators around how to get a better life for women and girls. New honorees will be announced this year beginning January 16 in Chicago and you can see them on live stream from the Women in the World summit on April 3rd to 5th. Meanwhile, We checked in on the first six Mothers of Invention honorees to ask them what difference the recognition, and the Toyota cash prize has meant to them since.

Asenath Andrews, Founding Principal of the Catherine Ferguson Academy
Her Genius Idea: A Detroit-area charter school for pregnant and parenting teens that’s committed to helping its 179 students beat the odds: Only 40 percent of teen moms finish high school, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and America’s Promise Alliance, but close to 100 percent of Andrews’s students do—most going on to two- or four-year colleges.

Women in the World Highlight: While Andrews admits to being a bit star-struck upon meeting Tracey Ullman (“If I ever see her again, I’ll apologize for being such a little girl!”), she was most captivated by “the brainpower and energy of all these women, from all these different places, in one room,” she says. “It should have elevated the building. Literally—we should have just floated up.”

The Latest News: Andrews set aside some of her Mothers of Invention grant to teach her students about entrepreneurship: “I started a think tank,” she says. “For six weeks during the summer of 2012, I paid 10 girls to come in every day for four hours to read, write, and think about issues that had to do with the school.” She took the idea a step further this past summer by identifying a few key repair projects around the school and encouraging students to form businesses to take on the work. “It has given them a sense that their ideas have value,” she says, “and a sense of what it takes to run your own company.”

The Impact of the Mothers of Invention Honor: “The recognition lets our students know that where they go is an important place, and that there are people outside our staff that think it’s important,” says Andrews. “For me, personally, it’s been extraordinary,” she says, referring to the recognition and subsequent invitations to speak at PopTech and TED, among other conferences. “I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years and didn’t think anyone gave a darn at all.”

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Source: The Daily Beast | Women in the World | SARAH J. ROBBINS

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