Healthy Teen Girl Feature: Julia & Maria

Meet our amazing healthy teen girl features, Julia and Maria! Don't let their age fool you, they are the founders of a nonprofit organization, Pretty Purposeful!

In their own words:  “We are Julia and Maria, 16 & 14 year old sisters from Southlake, TX. We run our own 501(c)(3) nonprofit, PrettyPurposeful.com. Our goal is to raise funds for obstetric fistula surgeries in Africa by selling our own products on our site, putting on events, and working with corporate sponsors. We first heard about obstetric fistula when we watched the documentary "A Walk to Beautiful". Obstetric fistula is caused by the combined problems of child marriage and malnutrition, when small girls and young women give birth to full-term babies. This leads to an obstructed labor period, which causes tissue to rub together and die, creating a hole, or "fistula", which causes them to leak uncontrollably from their bowels and bladder. In most cases, the baby will not survive, and the girl will be left with a painful, devastating, and embarrassing condition. The worst part is that these girls are often rejected by husbands, families, and communities, since they've lost their purpose in their society.”

Julia & Maria say:  “Our goal is to provide life-changing $500 fistula repair surgeries, to help these hurting girls recover and help them to find a new purpose in life, and feel beautiful again (hence the meaning behind our name, "Pretty Purposeful").

We also wanted to start our charity so that we could inspire local girls to find their passion and care about others. We decided a good way to raise money for surgeries would be to create an all-day event for local teen girls about finding their purpose. This past summer we put on our first event, Camp Pretty Purposeful! We had 13 female speakers, including a former supermodel, two M.D.s, two amazing teen speakers with their own charities/books, and a South Sudanese refugee. The camp also included a fashion show, hair and makeup demos, as well as fitness and nutrition talks. Girls were able to text in questions for the speakers to answer at the end of their speeches. Local businesses donated hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards and gifts that we raffled off, and the speakers sold their products at tables. Overall, many teen girls left inspired and encouraged, and we were able to raise thousands of dollars for surgeries!

Our future goals for Pretty Purposeful include traveling to Africa at some point to meet with future patients and establish relationships with local clinics and doctors, putting on another event next summer, and expanding our product line on our website.”

We say: Awesome work Julia and Maria! Keep up the good work! Good luck raising funds for obstetric fistula surgeries for young women in Africa and raising awareness at the same time! Congratulations to you two!

Check out an interview Julia and Maria did this summer on D the Broadcast:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cWxo0OEzVI and this video of them explaining more abut their charity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yWucIBNcJk

You may also follow them on Twitter: @PPurposeful

Are you (or someone you know) an inspirational teen girl doing great things in the community? If so, please e-mail us at info@girlshealthed.org. We'd love to hear from you!