Cooperative, Collective, Collaboration
By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
A self-proclaimed “inter-personal individual,” Brooklyn native Marcelle Lashley-Kaboré has a Global Majority perspective with her Girls With Knowledge (GWK) school-based programs. “In GWK, we say that the whole purpose is education, access, and opportunity that leads to action. We want to create that platform.”
Fighting inequities in opportunities, she told Our Time Press that she teaches, “Education, access, and opportunity lead to action.”
As the founder of Girls/Goddesses With Knowledge (GWK), working with schools such as P.S. 287—The Bailey K. Ashford on Navy Street in Brooklyn, she proudly declared herself “an experiential marketing content curator and producer who took a powerful turn in 2013, following her first visit to Africa.”
Born in Trinidad, this Brooklyn native who now lives in Queens set up Girls With Knowledge – GWK in schools in the city.
Lashay-Kaboré has made it her mission to “increase young girls’ awareness of the influence of media messages and equip them with the tools to analyze, challenge, and create content that reflects their true selves.”
Full of effervescence for spreading her wisdom, hers is the tale of many a local. “Brooklyn is very special to me,” she told Our Time Press. “I am Trinidadian-born, of Guyanese descent, and we migrated to Brooklyn.”
With initiatives from Brooklyn to Queens and the Bronx, she added, “My largest programs–and where we spend most of our time–are in Brooklyn.”
A world traveler with an integrated Caribbean and U.S. overview, the youth advocate continued, “I think there’s a lot that informs the elements I include inside of our programming with a global perspective.
I am of Caribbean descent, and I have married into a West African family—Burkina Faso—so it’s Francophone. I am an alumnus of the China Europe International Business School, which is a global MBA program.
“All of that has allowed me not just to have a global perspective by traveling for learning, or visiting home, or visiting family, or even for my studies, but also allowed me to immerse myself in these environments. Many of us travel, and we go to the Americas or in Africa. Or we go to the tourist destination where there’s no real immersion, and so for me, one of the things I have been able to do in the decades that I’ve been traveling–whether it is for family, education, or leisure, is to ensure that I am really learning and immersing myself in the culture, the food, the language, the mindset, and the perspective, and that has helped to inform my programs and initiatives.”
Introducing social entrepreneurship, she is using her influence and experience as she is forcefully “determined to create a multimedia platform that empowers youth, redefines narratives, and disrupts historical patterns.”
But there is more. “What if the next global leader, the next groundbreaking entrepreneur, or the next changemaker is a young girl who just needs to be seen, heard, and given a chance?” she asked Our Time Press readers. Her brand new initiative, GWK Global, “not only empowers young women—we create the ecosystems that make their leadership inevitable.”
Believing in the “power of investing in young women to create lasting change,” Lashley-Kaboré told the paper that her Global Village Initiative “is more than a program—it’s a movement to empower 10 girls in 10 countries (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal, Trinidad, Guyana, Côte D’Ivoire, New York, London, and Jamaica) for 10 years. These young leaders will receive mentorship, education, and resources to become the next generation of business, civic, and global changemakers.”
Fierce Advocate “When you invest in a girl, you uplift an entire community,” the proponent of fiercely supporting girl power added, “Studies show that every additional year of schooling for a girl can increase her future earnings by up to 20%, breaking cycles of poverty and fostering economic stability.”
This vital initiative ensures “these young women have access to the tools they need to rise, lead, and inspire change on a global scale.”
A multi-Emmy Award winner as a producer “and Global Transformer,” Lashley-Kaboré was celebrated for her social justice and “edutainment” contributions. She was also a 2020 City Council candidate in Forest Hills.
Deep in thought, she added, “I have seen the range of inequities. It is important for the young people who are here to understand what they have, in comparison to some children abroad who don’t even have access to education, who don’t have the opportunity to have lunch, or who receive a scholarship to have access to education–but education needs transportation, clothing, and school supplies, and a number of expenses that their parents may not be able to afford. So, no education for you.”
She contemplated, “That’s not a thing here. Young people may get school lunches and say, ‘I’m not eating this.’ They throw it away because they don’t want it.”
Utilizing this analysis, in addition to the tenets of her upbringing, “it becomes a part of what we infuse into our programming so that there is a greater sense of appreciation and accountability.”
Lashay-Kaboré’s mentor mission goes further, though, highlighting “the power that we have collectively and how to really collaborate. There is a need to unlearn and relearn.”
A global town crier of sorts, she pointed out the deep-rooted destructive effects of “Colonialism and colorism–you’re Caribbean, you’re African.”
Black and brown people have been targeted geographically and racially, she said. “When you only have limited opportunity, that forces you to fight for that one opportunity.“
With GWK, she wants to harness the power “that comes from a collective, collaborative, cooperative place, which is really essential in being able to be self-sufficient and sustainable as a culture. That mindset is what I bring to GWK; it is what I‘m trying to make sure that young people at a young age can understand, to have, and see done differently with our instructors, and the collaborative relationships that I have, and our principles and stakeholders. We have them creating businesses and doing it collaboratively, sharing, and coming together and becoming stronger together.”
With outreach for city and state funding, “The relationship begins in schools and principals. We are now speaking with shelters and community centers to make the programs more accessible.”
Her Global Village Initiative aims for participants to work collectively and collaboratively from 6th grade to adulthood, higher education, or trade school, with fees and education paid for.
She told Our Time Press, “We need sustainability to create any type of impact on the wealth gap.”
The girls will receive “structured mentorship, leadership training, financial literacy, international exchanges, and youth. They need to be taught how to manage the money, conduct forecasting, and create long-term plans to grow the business, ensuring they are not just making money but impacting change in the community, remaining not just mission-aligned, but becoming gainfully employed, so their children can go to school and have residences.”
Ultimately, Lashay-Kaboré concluded, “We’re looking to empower these young women to uplift their communities and inspire change across the board…by giving them a voice and giving them access.”
