Amy Poehler's Smart Girls

Smart Finds: The Power of Kindness

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Kindness can be a challenge. Sure, having good feelings about one another is easy enough, but real kindness—the sort that makes an impact, the sort that makes an effort—that sort of kindness takes hard work. That's why we were inspired to read the latest post by Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls about girls and women who are doing the hard work of kindness and making a real difference in their communities and around the world. Click through to read the whole article, and keep looking for ways to use your abilities in kind ways to help and empower those around you.

amysmartgirls.com - In this series, the Smart Girls team scours the internet in search of thought-provoking trailblazing women and girls who are leading by example. Today’s subject: the power of kindness.

Oftentimes, people are judged and celebrated based on their individual achievements alone. Today, we celebrate three women who inspire us to think outside ourselves and do good for those around us, whether at home, at work, or abroad.

Emily Duffy: Engineering for the Homeless

16-year-old Emily Duffy from Limerick, Ireland invented a lightweight, smart sleeping bag to improve quality of life for homeless individuals. Emily replaced traditional cloth materials with metallic bubble wrap, waterproof velcro, and a fireproof coating for increased visibility and warmth.  The idea came to her while organizing a fundraiser for a homeless shelter. A year later, the Duffily Bag is being used on the streets of Dublin. Better yet, homeless individuals are paid 22 euros to build their own bags, giving them a respite from the street and an opportunity to take steps back into the workforce. You can read more about Emily and the Duffily Bag here(via The Huffington Post)

Read the rest of the article here. Founded by artist Amy Poehler and producer Meredith Walker, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls uses humor and education to celebrate intelligence and curiosity and to help young people "cultivate their authentic selves." 

 

Be a Part of the Smartest New Book Club, #WLClub

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A movement that began on Twitter and has since expanded to Google groups, Instagram, and posts all over social media; writer Rachel Syme's book club promoting books about women, by women has taken off, spreading around the Internet and world. Read about the club and movement in this article by Amy Poehler's Smart Girls. Which biography of an extraordinary woman would you like to add to the list?  amysmartgirls.com - Lately in my Twitter feed I keep seeing the hashtag #wlclub and after a few days of dismissing it, curiosity finally won out and I clicked. What does it stand for? Women’s Lives Club—a virtual book club with participants all from all over the world. February’s book is Janet Malcolm’s The Silent Woman, a biography of Sylvia Plath.

It’s the brainchild of prolific writer Rachel Syme, where anyone interested in participating can partake in reading a biography of a notable woman each month. I tracked Smart Girl Rachel Syme down via Twitter and asked her all about how this club came to be.

“The funny thing was, I was just on Twitter and I was wasting time as one tends to do. I was writing about paying attention to women’s lives in general, and really casually in a tweet storm, I asked if I were to start a monthly book club about women’s lives, would anyone do it.”

That tweet launched a thousand readers. Or at the very least just over four hundred (the group’s total at last count), but it’s still growing every day. Rachel started a Google group, asking for interested people to email her to be added. And how do the books get chosen? Everyone makes suggestions and Rachel puts the ones that are repeatedly named up to a vote. Next month’s pick, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Thurston by Valerie Boyd, won by a landslide.

Read the rest here.