Juniors Srijana Saha and Victoria Xiao (top left and top second right) forged both a friendship and a club in a common bond — empowering women. and started This was inspired by a branch of an organization the United Nations created, Girl Up. Young woman and girls in Guatemala, Liberia, India, Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda are being given opportunity to achieve the dreams that could not been accomplished in their kickstarted situations.

A mutual friend brought Saha and Xiao together and discovered the organization from the
UN. and encouraged the girls to bring the association to Cupertino to give MVHS students and the people of Cupertino opportunities to help less fortunate women and girls strive for equality and empowerment.  Xiao attempted to kickstart the club back in her sophomore year, because it seemed to MVHS, that Girl Up was simply fundraising and MVHS denied money to the club. They have now successfully kickstarted the organization in January of 2017.  Click here to sign up to the club.

Although the club may be fairly new, they have big plans for the future. In February, they will start
to kick off their Feminine Hygiene drive, accepting donations of pads, tampons and other feminine products. The drive helps women from under-developing countries to gain more accessible feminine commodities as these are considered necessities. The club also plans to design and sell stickers to students at MVHS to help fundraise money back into the UN to help girls in third-world countries.

Saha was part of Technovation and WiSTEM, women based clubs, during her freshman year. Using her experiences from a women empowerment based club, she leads this new organization with the rest of the members.

Even though in a city like Cupertino who are keen to help each other, Saha explained there is still insecurities inside of people based on sexuality, religion and gender.