Sixteen-year-old Sejal Hathi is a lifelong youth advocate who
passionately believes that all girls have the power to shape their
world and transform themselves into ambassadors for change.

A junior at Notre Dame High School in San
Jose, CA who has immersed herself in social change since she was a
little girl, Sejal dedicates close to 1,000 hours each year to giving
back to her community. She has always
been passionate about girl empowerment and peace-building initiatives,
an interest that was consolidated during her work with nonprofit
organization Girls for A Change, upon whose National Board of Directors
she is a member.

Galvanized by the suffering and poverty she witnessed in many girls
around the world, when Sejal was 15, she founded the international
nonprofit organization Girls Helping Girls to empower all girls to
transform their world* by mobilizing them to Eradicate Poverty,
Increase Access to Education, Improve Health, and Promote Peace.

Sejal has mentored, trained, and spoken to thousands of girls from over 11 countries
around the world on how to pursue peace and make their vision for the
world a reality, and raised over $20,000 to support their education and
basic needs thus far.

Girls Helping Girls' first initiative, the Empower-a-Girl program, is a
grassroots sister-team program that partners girls in the United States
with those in developing countries to work together to learn about
cultural exchange, to develop self-respect, and to achieve GHG's four
global goals. Girls Helping Girls' second initiative, Sisters 4 Peace,
is a social-change movement that provides the guidance, Toolkits, and
support network to aspiring girl changemakers around the globe who are
working independently from a team to launch their own projects.
Besides mentoring and speaking to thousands of youth on how to create
change, Sejal has also co-authored what is to become a monographic book
on the subject with a service-learning professional.

As a USA Ambassador for the organizations Ashoka and Youth Venture,
Sejal moreover works to build a global movement of youth
entrepreneurship and motivate innovative social change among young
people.

For her efforts, Sejal has received many awards
celebrating her work. In 2007, she was named a We Are Family Foundation
Global Teen Leader, and received the President's Call to Service Award,
the highest honor in this series. In 2008, Sejal received Soroptimist
International's First
Place Violet Richardson Award, Silicon Valley's "It Girl" Award, and
MTV's Teen Hero Award. She was also selected, with 9 other recipients,
from over 20,000 applicants to receive Discover Card's Tribute
Scholarship Award. In
Sejal's own words: "I feel blessed to be able to give back to the
community- my life would never be fulfilled without such service."

By uniting girls across cultural borders, Sejal's
mission is to democratize the quest for peace worldwide by creating a
sisterhood of changemakers making their vision for the world a reality.
More information about Girls Helping Girls is available at:
www.EmpoweraGirl.org