Michelle Obama kicks off Get Her There education initiative

Michelle Obama is launching a new girls education initiative that she says aims to “help clear away all that’s standing in the way of girls achieving their dreams.”

The Obama Foundation unveiled its Get Her There campaign on Tuesday, which it described as a “global call to action to support thousands of adolescent girls over the next five years.”

The campaign will fund more than 100 organizations working to improve girls’ education around the world, the foundation said. It will also give support to 12 additional community-based organizations, working in countries such as Colombia, Kenya and India.

The effort, timed to coincide with the International Day of the Girl, comes after the former first lady created the Girls Opportunity Alliance Campaign in 2018, a program within the Obama Foundation.

“When we launched the Girls Opportunity Alliance four years ago today, we knew the key to advancing our work was an alliance of stakeholders coming together to support girls completing their education,” Obama said in a statement.

“And that is exactly what the Get Her There campaign was created to do,” Obama said.

Organizers said the campaign, buoyed by sponsors including Comcast NBCUniversal, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lululemon and others, represented an expansion of the Girls Opportunity Alliance’s “reach and impact.”

“The barriers our girls face today are steep and are leaving millions of girls out of school,” Obama said, adding in a statement that her hope is that “everyone will join us on our mission to get every girl to the place she wants to be.”