Lenten Campaign 2025
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Have you ever felt like the media is full of bad news? Like the spotlight never shines on good people working to make the world a better place?
You’re not the only one to feel this way, and one woman is on a mission to do something about it.
Kate Milligan is the force behind 1 Girl Revolution, a nonprofit multimedia organization dedicated to highlighting the stories of everyday women and girls who are changing the world through their lives.
Milligan turned her own frustration with news coverage into a growing powerhouse of hope-filled stories.
A discouraging pattern
Kate Milligan worked in public relations and media in Washington, D.C., and over time, she began to notice a concerning trend.
I loved pitching stories and talking to reporters and finding creative ways to tell a story, but I started becoming really frustrated and disheartened when I would pitch a different kind of story, a story of an inspiring woman or girl who saw a need in her community and then she became the answer to the need. Those stories would rarely get picked up.
Milligan kept encountering inspiring women and girls. And she couldn’t help wishing there was a place where their stories could be heard. She moved back to Detroit in 2018, and the time seemed right to pursue this passion project at last.
A growing movement
She started 1 Girl Revolution as a podcast back in 2018, and today she’s released more than 250 podcast episodes and two documentaries on YouTube — one of which, “The Girl Inside,” was nominated for an Emmy Award. (Watch them here!)
How does Milligan choose who to interview? In one sense, every woman could be a candidate, as each has her own story to tell. Milligan said,
The heart of 1 Girl Revolution is that every single woman and girl is a “one girl revolution.” I believe to my core that each and every one of us can leave a unique imprint on this world. We were each created for a purpose and a mission. I really believe that every single woman could be on the podcast and have a story to tell.
But the mission of 1 Girl Revolution is shining a light on women who are “being a light” in the world. “Most of these stories are about someone who saw a need or experienced something hard in their own life, and they turned darkness to light and became the light in this world.”
A few favorite stories
Want to check out these amazing stories, but not sure where to start? Here are a few of our favorites.
- The Emmy-nominated short documentary “The Girl Inside” explores the work of Dr. Laura Biagi and five incarcerated women who participated in a life-changing academic course at Cook County Jail entitled “Storytelling as a Healing Art.” Watch it here.
- Laverne Delgado founded Freedom and Fashion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to using fashion and the creative arts to empower survivors of trafficking, homelessness, and other injustices. Listen to her story here.
- Julie Weatherhead, co-founder of Got Grief House, and Megan Galea, founder of Glimmer in the Dark, turned their personal experiences with grief into powerful missions of healing, support, and community. Listen to their stories here.
An outsized impact
1 Girl Revolution is a passion project for Milligan, and as she poured countless hours into it over the years, she knew she was called to tell these stories that weren’t being shared anywhere else.
“The thing that kept me going was these women,” she said. “1 Girl Revolution has become not only a nonprofit, but a movement of women supporting one another.”
Her years of work are bearing fruit, as 1 Girl Revolution is gaining national attention. Milligan appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show last month, along with one of the girls whose stories she’s shared, Ruby Kate Chitsey of Three Wishes for Ruby's Residents.
As 1 Girl Revolution grows and these powerful stories get the attention they deserve, Milligan hopes that people everywhere will be inspired:
What I hope people take away from 1 Girl Revolution is that every single person is inspired to be the person that they were created to be, and that it encourages them to be the change that they want to see — to shine their light and look for ways that they can change the world.
