Miss World Guyana 2020 Candidate, Gabriella Chapman and her Girl Build Girl Foundation (GBGF) took to the town of Bartica, a workshop and concert to continue her journey of empowering young women across Guyana.

Speaking to the Buzz, Chapman highlighted that the GBGF was crafted in 2017 while she was the reigning Miss Bartica Regatta Queen.

She realised that she could use her influence to do something that she is passionate about. That was basically cultivating self-confidence and unconditional self-worth in young girls.

Though she launched this programme as Miss Bartica, she indicated that the girls of Bartica were not able to benefit from any of those sessions, since she was no longer residing in the town.

Now that she has decided to venture into a new journey, the Miss World- Guyana (MWG) journey, she saw it fit to bring her hometown into the mix.

“Instead of creating something new for my ‘Beauty With A Purpose Campaign’, I am using what I would have already created- my GBGF- and expanding and building on that to make the cause more widespread across Guyana,” Chapman said.

Resultantly, on September 8, she introduced her foundation to Bartica. Here, she organized a forum where those girls who are already members of the group in Georgetown travelled to Bartica and shared testimonials on how they would have benefited from the foundation, and how important they felt it was. The girls were also given the opportunity to showcase their talents and tell their stories through poetry, song and spoken words.

The forum also featured performances from Michelle “Big Red” King and Carlvin Burnett, just to keep things entertaining.

Minister of Youth Affairs, within the Ministry of the Presidency, Simona Broomes was also there to share her own bit of wisdom and help add to the efforts being made to empower young girls.

The motto of the organisation “Uniting hearts, moulding minds and achieving dreams,” is one which Gabriella noted guides everything the GBGF does.

“We try to connect with each other on an emotional level, because I think when you’re connected by heart, you open up that emotive side of you and have a greater sense of obligation to help one another,” she said explaining, the group’s motto. That being done, and as a sisterhood is planted among the girls, the group then hopes to encourage the girls to ‘think big’.

With the programme introduced to Bartica, the candidate noted that in the short term, she and her team are getting ready to head back to Bartica in October, for a career guidance session which would first see the GBGF getting to know the young girls and their aspirations first.

“A lot of the girls (in Bartica) were inspired, along with some of the regional officials and they have all agreed that they will support the initiative coming to Bartica once per month,” Gabriella highlighted.

These sessions will target female students in third, fourth and fifth forms, and it will function to help the young girls understand who they are, their purpose, and how they can fulfil it.

“The aim is basically to expand their parameters of thinking so that they can think beyond what is readily available in Bartica, because Guyana is evolving, the world is evolving, and they too have to evolve,” the women empowerment advocate said. “We want to create more career-oriented women in Bartica break stereotypes and dominate across various spectrums.”

Importantly, however, Gabriella will not be the sole person conducting these sessions. She intends on taking trained resource persons with her as she engages the young girls.

“We’re also going to try to help them set a five and ten year plan for their lives and it’s basically equipping them with the general tools so we can say they had access to information and the ‘know-how’ so that they can figure out the next step after high school,” she explained.

In the long term, she also wants to bring girls from Bartica to Georgetown so that they can be exposed to activities there as well.