Inspiring Girls was founded in 2016 by Miriam González Durántez with a beautifully simple idea: girls should meet women who do interesting things, and hear how they got there. Ten years on, that idea has reached more than 300,000 girls across 40 countries, through close to 7,000 events, nearly 5,000 schools and more than 28,000 volunteer role models.
That is a lot of Tuesday afternoons spent in school halls, every one of which will have transformed someone life.
Club Avandra exists so that our members can broaden their own lives: travel well, in good company, with the logistics handled by someone else. But as a collective of extraordinary women, we are good for more than hotel upgrades.
So every Club Avandra member chooses one of our charity partners to automatically receive a portion of her membership fee. Our partners are Women in Travel CIC, The WOW Foundation and Inspiring Girls International, and each member decides where her share goes.
Inspiring Girls was an easy choice for us. Many of us have had a helping hand in life or career (or both), often by someone we meet along the way who has already done it. Most of us can name the woman who did that for us. Inspiring Girls exists to make sure the next generation doesn't leave it to chance.
Girls grow up surrounded by messages about how they should look, behave and what ambitions are meant for them. By the time they reach a workplace, these may well have limited each individual horizon.
The charity's Girls Mean Business campaign tackles this head-on, giving girls aged 11 to 16 a grounding in business, money and entrepreneurship, and putting them in a room with women who have built careers and companies of their own. It is practical, unpatronising and (probably) pretty good at producing future founders.
The anniversary theme is #ThankYouForTheNo, an invitation to women to share the moments when rejection or a closed door sent them somewhere better. Almost every one of us has a story that begins with a firm refusal and ends with a far better outcome, often told on our trips (with relish).
It is also exactly the sort of honesty girls rarely get. Career talks tend to present a tidy ladder. Hearing that the route involved a few setbacks, a pivot and a decision to ignore someone's advice is way more useful.
Those of is with experience, resources and a reasonable amount of influence making sure girls with fewer opportunities can see a wider map of what their lives might become feels to us a very good fit for Club Avandra. A role model in a classroom costs very little and can change a great deal.
That is what your membership helps to fund. Every time you book a trip, attend an event or settle into the Avandra Lounge, a girl somewhere gets a little closer to meeting a woman who will tell her, "Yes, you can do that, and here's how."
Until tomorrow, 13 October, all donations to Inspiring Girls International are being doubled. If you'd like to give a little extra to a charity we're proud to stand beside, this is a very good week to do it.
Happy tenth birthday, Inspiring Girls. We can't wait to see what the next decade brings.
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