As juniors Maya Menon and Avika Guttigoli crossed the Nile River by boat, they began to see the young women they mentored through the Global Girls Connect club come into view, singing and dancing to welcome them to the Jinja district of Uganda.
Alongside nine other students from the Dallas area, juniors Maya Menon and Avika Guttigoli traveled with their families to Africa this past summer. During their four days in Uganda, they organized a business panel, held fun day for the primary school next to the African Women’s Workforce Initiative (AWWI) and led a session on reproductive health and menstrual education.
“My parents are doctors and there was interest in having a medical camp, and we collaborated with doctors and a hospital nearby at the AWWI campus so people in the villages could get medical care because they hadn’t had treatment their entire lives,” Guttigoli said.
Menon serves as the president and co-founder of Global Girls Connect, a club she created to train young women in hospitality and information technology (IT) through AWWI in Uganda.
“I went on a trip with my family to Africa last summer and we worked with AWWI, which guarantees a job at a hotel in Uganda to women who are stuck in cycles of abuse and poverty,” Menon said. “I came home excited and wanted to get Hockaday involved with them.”
Before the 2024-2025 school year began, Menon got Guttigoli on board as the vice president and co-founder and met with Laura Day to explain her vision and how she could bring the club to life.
“I met with Maya on Zoom over the summer with her and the founder of the organization, and she talked me through the experience and what it meant for her,” Day said. “Maya cared so much, which is why she was able to pull it off and stuck with it.”
When they first started the club, Menon and Guttigoli worked to find a system that would maximize their impact on the students in Uganda.
“We had lots of discussion about how they could best support the school in general, and we decided that one-on-one relationships are very profound,” Menon said. “We established close connections with the leadership and the team and met about once a month to figure out how to best support the girls there.”
As the leaders of a 20-person club, Menon and Guttigoli established one-on-one pairings and figured out the structure of meetings.
“We had to make tangible outcomes of achievements, and it became smoother throughout the year,” Guttigoli said. “This year, we are working on reinforcing the relationships we had and making it more group focused.”
Throughout the school year, Global Girls Connect meets twice as an entire club: once at the beginning of the year and once at the end of the year. They also have mentorship sessions each month, split up over five days.
“We do age-based selection because we wanted the girls closer to their age, so it is truly peer mentorship,” Menon said. “After doing a form to see if people had interests in common, we wrote introductory notes to our buddies.”
Reflecting on the impact of the club and the relationships she has built, Guttigoli recalls the first session with her buddy.
“In my very first meeting with my buddy, we talked about common interests, and she said she liked to sing,” Guttigoli said. “She sang a Ugandan song, and she was so humble. When I told her she sounded amazing, the girl was so thankful that I wanted to hear about her life and her song.”
This summer, getting to meet their buddies face-to-face helped Menon and Guttigoli see the impact of their club on these young women. From getting a walk-through of the facilities and seeing everything their buddies have learned to working with their buddies to plan a fun day for the younger students, the trip helped them form deeper connections.
“At least 10 of the girls had saved a little of their stipend to send gifts for their buddies,” Menon said. “Coming back and having a say in the itinerary made it a lot more impactful, and I loved seeing it with Avika and people who weren’t as familiar with it. The community is so special.”
Guttigoli believes that the trip will allow them to strengthen their club for the upcoming school year.
“We met them and saw what they need, so we can better tailor the club and the mission toward,” Guttigoli said. “It is beneficial to create a real outcome with everything we learned.”
Menon believes in-person time with the buddies helps create long-lasting memories.
“Connecting online is a fun opportunity, but something about being face-to-face and seeing where they go to school and live was much more impactful,” Menon said. “It is so cool to form closer connections by going there, and I can follow up with my buddy while I’m in Dallas.”
Thinking back on the trip and the lessons it brought her, Guttigoli feels grateful for the full-circle experience of getting to know her buddy in person.
“It was rewarding to see how much they care for our service, and experiencing is so much different than hearing about it,” Guttigoli said. “The trip opened my eyes to what is going on in the rest of the world.”
