New York, NY (Top40 Charts) "Going from the most entitled, selfish, ungrateful teen and then going to Africa changed me so drastically," says Funk.
Jessie Funk, a renowned national motivational speaker, during her teenage years was a self proclaimed struggling 'Mean Girl' in her teens until a transformative trip to Africa changed her outlook on her life.
She's now taking the power of that trip to change bullying across the country by recreating the experience with a new set of girls while creating a documentary of the trip that captures the transformation.
"Going from the most entitled, selfish, ungrateful teen and then going to Africa changed me so drastically," says Funk, "I was no longer bulimic, I all the sudden found the ability to forgive my mom for leaving our family, I started to love myself, I loved others, I was motivated to work hard- it changed everything for me."
It's an area that Funk knows well. As the Executive
Director of Ivy Girl Academy, a non-profit organization that teaches teen girls to be confident, classy, and powerful leaders, she works with girls on a daily basis to instill all the important traits needed to succeed in today's world. Through this organization, Funk has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Razoo to bring the documentary to life.
Ivy Girl Academy in partnership with Think Kindness is going to be taking three "entitled, ungrateful, mean, struggling" teen girls to Ghana this August for three weeks while filming their transformation. While in Africa, the girls are going to see firsthand real human struggle in a third world country while volunteering their time to give back to those less fortunate.
"We are breeding entitlement here in the U.S.," adds Funk, "Every American teen needs the opportunity to serve in a third world country- it should be standard curriculum for our youth. If more kids served we would have less kids on medication, we would have less bullying, suicide, cutting, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse and we would have more grateful, more compassionate, more aware children."
The Mean Girl Makeover crowdfunding campaign has several different pledge levels to not only assist in helping pay for the expense of the trip and the filming, but also money which will go directly to helping the children of Ghana with everything from school supplies, to clean shoes and clothing. Once successfully funded,
Jessie Funk hopes to take the film to schools nationwide to students everywhere.
The Mean Girl Makeover Documentary is now live and available to support on Razoo: https://www.razoo.com/us/story/Mean-Girl-Makeover-Documentary-1
Mean Girl Makeover is documentary film produced by Ivy Girl Academy, a 501(c)(3) organization that teaches teen girls to be confident, classy, powerful leaders. We teach twelve different areas of essential ladyhood skills such as the psychology behind confidence, positive thinking, the power of gratitude and service, goal-setting, health, self-defense, self-respect, personal power and of course the art of leadership. We conduct all day workshops and are soon expanding into summer camps and school curricula.
