Stamford Woman Travels To Africa To Help Women Escape Poverty

STAMFORD, Conn. -- A Stamford woman and recent Yale University grad is raising funds to support a post-graduate year in Kenya to improve the lives of impoverished women.

Allie Souza of Stamford, a graduate of Yale University, will spend the next year in Kenya to improve the lives of impoverished women.
Photo Credit: *Screen grab from Yale University video*

Tom Renner

07/23/2016 5:30 a.m.

Allie Souza said on her Go Fund Me page that she will be working in coordination with the BOMA Project, a U.S. nonprofit and Kenyan NGO with a transformative approach to alleviating poverty and building resiliency in the drylands of Africa.

"As part of BOMA’s Monitoring & Evalutation team, I will help to implement programs that allow women to 'graduate' from extreme poverty by giving them tools to start small businesses in their communities,'' Souza said on the Go Fund Me page.

Souza graduated from Yale this spring, where she also served as the captain of the university's softball team. Souza said as the daughter "two strong women who raised me to be independent and self-sufficient, and as a female entering the business world, I am deeply committed to female empowerment and women’s rights."

She wrote on the Go Fund Me page that the "growing concentration of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is of tremendous concern, and while some countries have seen success in reducing poverty, this area as a whole lags behind the rest of the world. However, this trend can be significantly diminished with the introduction of financial literacy and business planning, specifically for women living in extreme poverty."

Souza was a three-sport standout at Westhill High School, where she was the recipient of the Allyson Rioux Award in 2012. The award honors athletes for sportsmanship, leadership, character and athletic ability. Souza was the captain of the soccer, basketball and softball teams, and earned first team All-State honors as a senior in softball.

At Yale, Souza played in 142 games in her career, and did not commit an error in her final three seasons. She was also co-founder and President of Heart to Heart, a high school club dedicated to helping others within the school, community, country and world with outreach projects including Crutches 4 Kids, Brady’s Smile, Haiti Earthquake Relief and Japanese Earthquake Relief.

Click here for Allie's Go Fund Me page and to learn more about her cause.

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