The cold autumn air carried leaves along Greenough St. as groups of students made their way over to the bake sale hosted by the Women in STEM Club after school on Wednesday, Nov. 13. The bake sale was held to raise money for the Malala Fund.
The Malala Fund was founded by Malala Yousafzai, a female education activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, in 2013. The nonprofit organization strives to provide education to underprivileged girls and advocates to change policies that prevent girls from receiving education.
Yousafzai’s impactful work inspired junior and co-president Zoe Zucar to think about how the club could help women all over the world.
“Malala is really influential, and she is doing a lot of work to educate uneducated and underfunded women in a lot of different countries,” Zucar said. “We thought it was really important to give money to that and do our part to impact people in need, especially women’s education.”
Junior and co-president Avery Sutton-Rath said the Malala Fund’s mission aligns with the values of the club.
“Our whole club is trying to empower girls in the STEM fields because typically women are underrepresented,” Sutton-Rath said. “We wanted to support a fundraiser that followed the same beliefs that we try to promote in our club.”
The club was originally started by alumni and has since been passed down to the current co-presidents who have organized many interactive STEM activities during their biweekly X-block meetings. The club has also participated in outreach to middle school science fairs and clubs. In the coming years, the club hopes to organize science-related field trips for students.
The bake sale was the club’s first fundraiser this year and, according to junior and co-president Lara Grossman, they plan to do many more in the future.
“We really want to empower women,” Grossman said. “We want to raise money and donate to charities that we think are going to help encourage women on a global scale who might not be as privileged or have the resources that we have.”
