International Girls Ambition & Achievement Program (GAAP)

What is the International Girls’ Ambition and Achievement Program (GAAP)?

The International Girls’ Ambition and Achievement Program (GAAP) is a student-led initiative co-founded by Nimet Aysan and Namyanzi Edwards. The program is dedicated to empowering young women as they navigate the challenges of entering the workforce. GAAP focuses on providing high school girls, particularly those aged 15-18 with the exception of their international participants, with the tools, resources, and opportunities they need to succeed in professional environments and show their participants and scholars the ubiquity of opportunities and welcoming mentors to those who chase and explore them. By addressing the specific hurdles that young women face—such as defining and landing their first internship, overcoming unhealthy environments, working past biases, and building confidence—GAAP aims to equip them with the skills necessary to thrive in competitive settings. The program also emphasizes the importance of self-advocacy, adaptability, and interdisciplinary exploration, helping girls prepare and overcome obstacles and setbacks thrown their way and instead grow out of the experience.

What Does GAAP Do?

GAAP offers a variety of programs and initiatives designed to support young women as they prepare for and enter professional environments. These include symposiums, webinars, and workshops that focus on college preparation, career development, and self-advocacy. Through the information that GAAP mentors detail, young women learn about what it means to project confidence in competitive environments, learn maturity and self-presentation, and formality and professionalism in relationship to the workplace: topics that are more often than not, overlooked and withheld from young women.

The program helps girls identify and pursue internships, fellowships, and other professional opportunities, particularly those that are less known or biased against young women In addition to professional development, GAAP also addresses the challenges faced by international girls and their specific and diverse circumstances and backgrounds they come from in relation to their academic and scholarly future. One prevalent issue that girls living in  underprivileged and remote communities face is the necessity to support their families. Such as it is, these girls end up dropping out of school to instead work and provide and while it may be a necessary task for some of these girls, GAAP hopes that they can encourage girls to not give up on their academic and professional dreams completely and realize the long-term benefits and rewards of exploring professional careers. By targeting early-stage developments and providing resources through virtual workshops with the help of African based organizations, specifically one in Kenya, GAAP helps these girls continue their education and explore higher education opportunities. GAAP’s program also puts an emphasis on an ambitious and self-starting mindset to encourage their participants and scholars to go beyond what GAAP can offer and explore more by themselves.

While GAAP hopes to bridge that gap that young and underprivileged women face to the modern-day professional landscape, the fact is that GAAP won’t be able to provide niche and heavily-specific support to every student. Instead however, GAAP will provide resources, through their team of mentors, industry leaders, and partners as well as a growing list for student-orientated opportunities, that give their participants a stepping-stone to take their passions by their own hand and make something for themselves instead of always relying on someone else. GAAP encourages girls to engage in interdisciplinary ventures, exploring fields beyond traditional boundaries. For example, while science has topics in biology and chemistry, it is more than that and has implications in other fields like medicine and technology. The program aims to inspire young women to think creatively and broadly to pursue projects and passions in areas such as research, business, the humanities and other projects that they can imagine. By fostering a supportive community, hopes to upbring young women and overcome the ingrained barriers and biases in modern-day society and cultivate a growing acceptance and established place for women in the workplace. 

About the Founders

GAAP was founded by Nimet Aysan and Namyanzi Edwards, both of whom bring their unique experiences stemming from their various extracurricular ventures and passions from various fields of study to the program.

Nimet Aysan is one of the proud co-founders of GAAP. As a young high school student during her freshman and sophomore years, she shares feeling unsure and intimidated by the idea of internships, saying also that if she was asked to define what an internship was, she would be lost for words. However, Nimet took the chance and applied to an internship program hosted by the University of Southern California. During her program, she flew out from Pennsylvania and was amazed by the people she met, their stories and backgrounds, and the impact and determination to pursue their endeavors. She reflected on the experience afterwards and grew to love the ambitious and dream-chasing attitude her peers had. Another impactful detail that Nimet was able to learn from her program was the implications the location had on her college readiness and selection progress, one that others, she observed, struggled with and had little resources or mentors to help them prepare. While Nimet feels regretful that internships and projects weren’t something that she had explored as a younger high school student, she believes that now with her experience she could help bring up other girls facing similar doubts. 

While her ideas and hopes first culminated in her non-profit Youth for EcoJustice focused on exposing young girls to the world of sustainability, she wanted the impact and message of the organization to be heard on a larger international scale. What resulted was GAAP. Nimet’s personal experiences, including the obstacles that come with securing internships and the blatant misogyny she faced in her attempts to find any, motivated her to create a new program that could offer the support she wished she had. Nimet’s motivation behind GAAP also stemmed from her Turkish background and the close-knit and supporting nature of her Turkish community. She hoped that like the Turkish community’s commitment to supporting, advocating, and developing youth, GAAP would do the same for struggling and disadvantaged young women who faced inequalities and biases in their attempts to explore their passions as well.

Namyanzi Edwards is the fellow co-founder of GAAP and she leads discussions on the vital importance of women accessing STEM opportunities. She is dedicated to guiding young women in developing versatility in their career pursuits, emphasizing the integration of diverse skill sets, whether STEM-based or humanities-focused, to excel and lead in a competitive landscape. Since a young age, she has participated in various competitions, enrichment programs, and internships, such as her leukemia research at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City for which she left her home in Connecticut to pursue over the summer. . But through those experiences, Namyanzi noticed a large number of girls who avoided such opportunities out of fear and uncertainty.

Namyanzi’s education has been at magnet schools from K-12 where diversity is prioritized and that influenced her desire to serve as a district-wide Student Senator, representing 36 towns, where she continues to champion for equitable education. At her school, she founded STEM Fusion, a club focused on increasing inclusivity in STEM, where members would compete in events including the Yale Brain Bee, Science Bowl, and Science Olympiad. This experience, coupled with her efforts to bridge gaps in her city, inspired her to create GAAP. She wanted to extend her impact beyond school and domestic borders, as she oftentimes is advising her cousins in Uganda and Europe on how to stay competitive and forge international connections in the professional realm. 

Furthermore, she is a proud proponent for self-advocacy and self-initiative and pushes these values by encouraging girls to look out for themselves and explore on their own with her and GAAP’s guidance. Through her values as an opportunistic go-getter, she believes that opportunities should focus on presenting themselves to those lacking experience but are interested in gaining as well as towards those who may not have the resources to provide for such opportunities, such as financial burden or location complications. Ultimately, Namyanzi’s goal is to ensure that opportunities are presented to the right people and the right people find the opportunities that can grow them into self-sustaining and improving characters.

The Future of GAAP

GAAP has already dedicated their efforts towards expanding their platform and outreach to support their target audience. Firstly, GAAP has already begun fundraising for global initiatives, such as providing solar panels for schools in Kenya in the summer of 2025 with the help of [company name will be sent on LinkedIn].. Since its beginning, GAAP has had a growing network of organizations serving youth around the world including but not limited to, Innobitious, Living Outside, For Our Planet and Sunday Steps 4 Mental Health. Future collaborative webinars between these partnerships will commence in GAAP’s first academic term from September 2024 to June 2025. After many successful panels with guests matriculating to Ivy League universities, working in big-tech, and leading established non-profit organizations, GAAP is excited to continue giving its Scholars access to open discussions with women in leadership.

Otherly, GAAP hopes to expand their sources by encouraging others around the US to found and lead chapters that can utilize the resources already established by Nimet and Namyanzi and reach more people from their location as well. GAAP also hopes to expand on their symposium and workshop programs by organizing and establishing in-person events. Their partnership with Sunday Steps 4 Mental Health in Toronto has already forecasted a great way to step into physical space as the organization there holds their events in person. On the other hand, Nimet and Namyanzi hope to organize in-person events in their local communities in the northeast and gather girls from the region to interact and learn from each other. Another goal GAAP finds essential to their program is the credibility of the resources and information they provide. 

By doing so, GAAP hopes that their participants and scholars not only get the experiential side of professional development from Nimet and Namyanzi, but also knowledge from accredited and higher-education centers. GAAP also presents itself as a great way for students and young women to get involved. Through opportunities like chapter foundership and leadership, girls can learn more about professionalism and work to spread advocacy for the message GAAP hopes to spread. Nimet and Namyanzi encourage any interested students to reach out and inquire more into what the role would look like and other opportunities they may have for aspiring young women.