Fruits of Fall

New Executive Assistant:  JoRelle Grover.

This fall has brought many wonderful changes to the ASAH organization. ASAH has a new executive assistant, JoRelle Grover, who has brought years of anthropology work and nonprofit understanding with her. Her mother grew up in Central Africa and was a teenager during the Burundi genocide in 1972.  This gave JoRelle an empathy and insight into war-torn areas and its effects, specifically in Central Africa. ASAH is a perfect match for her as the plight of young girls and their protection, education, and empowerment in Central Africa is constantly on her heart. Her education is wonderfully tailored toward helping the ASAH girls and understanding the struggles and obstacles they face as girls, Africans, and survivors of war.  Due to her empathy and experience, she gained her masters degree in cultural anthropology with a focus on cross-cultural conflict resolution. She balances her heavy thoughts and experiences with a light heartedness and joy in every day. JoRelle likes to pretend that she’s still in her twenties, she loves to read, landscape, and make floral arrangements. She has a BS in fine arts (print making) and a BS in anthropology – both from NDSU.

She helped implement our fall fundraiser, Underwear and Underwrite, where ASAH created a reusable maxi pads and new underwear event for girls in refugee camps for our ASAH girls to distribute. It was a success and helped bring in over 600 panties and over 200 pads! We were able to partner with Zero Gravity, an alternative fitness studio, where they hosted the event.

Shortly after our Underwear and Underwrite event, ASAH participated in Give to the Max Day hosted by GiveMN. This was an online campaign that was geared towards nonprofits and schools in Minnesota for a day of charitable giving. We were able to be blessed with two donors who provided a match of $5,000 and ultimately raised over $10,500 in funds to help our girls in Uganda! This was a great experience for us and we hope to use what we learned in February for Giving Hearts Day. This will also be our first year participating in Giving Hearts, which makes it doubly exciting!

Our year end campaign is fully underway with the wonderful aspect of us reaching our tenth year as ASAH. We look forward to the spring with a ten-year anniversary event and a new film featuring the ASAH girls.