Newport girl on the cover of Seventeen
A Newport Beach woman’s effort to help young girls around the world has landed her the cover of Seventeen Magazine.
Lindsay Brown’s work with nonprofits won her the magazine’s Pretty Amazing cover contest, which readers voted on, and editors and actress Emma Roberts judged. She will also receive a $20,000 scholarship from Neutrogena.
She shared her love of soccer with girls from the Kopila Valley School in Nepal, a place where, she said, females aren’t treated equally. Brown, 21, created Nepal’s first female soccer team.
“Soccer is a way of life in developing communities around the world,” she said. “Not only did the girls get more confident each day of practice, but, in school, they raised their hands more and the boys respected them more as equals.”
At the end of her junior soccer season at the University of Notre Dame, Brown decided to quit to focus solely on her newly created SEGway Project, which she developed after helping the girls in Nepal.
“Playing a sport in college is a job,” she said. “It’s 100% and you’re exhausted. It was a tough decision, but after coming back from Nepal, I knew it was the right decision.”
The SEGway Project supports academics and athletics for underprivileged girls, allowing them to escape a cycle of poverty and become world leaders. Last April, the SEGway Project formed a partnership with the Kibera Girls Soccer Academy in Kenya.
“Right now, our goal is to help connect soccer players in the United States with the Kibera girls and Kopila girls,” Brown said. “What makes a difference is the friendship and communications.”
She has also been involved in other nonprofits, including She’s the First and the Girl Effect, both of which support girls’ education around the world.
In the fall of 2010, Brown, along with her dorm mates, had bake sales sponsoring She’s the First. Brown and her partners raised $1,000 for three girls to go to school at Kopila Valley School. The money helped the girls with tuition, health care, school supplies, uniforms and food.
“We were just so set on sponsoring those little girls, so we didn’t really care to get paid back for the [cupcake] supplies,” she said. “I was really focused on the role education can play in the cycle of poverty the girls were born into.”
Brown’s work with nonprofits is shared in Seventeen Magazine’s October issue, on sale Tuesday.
She said she is “overwhelmed” to think so many people will read her story.
“It was surreal [to win the contest] because [Seventeen] has 2 million subscribers and 13 million readers,” she said. “I just really hope it makes the readers think of the things they can do to positively influence someone else’s life. I’m just thrilled and honored to be able to give a voice to these amazing girls I’ve met around the world.”
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