Cyndi Lauper has announced her fund, Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights, which was created to financially support women’s issues and rights in an inclusive way. The fund will be a donor advised fund housed and promoted at the Tides foundation.
With this partnership, the first year’s grants will mainly be given to organizations that are ensuring access to abortion and other health services.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun–damental Rights
Lauper has decided to launch this fund in response to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade earlier this year. It will represent the next step to being a long-standing advocate for rights to abortion, women as a whole and in support of the LGBTQ+ community. This announcement is also related to the International Day of the Girl.
The most recent standpoints for reproductive freedom have inspired Lauper to re-release a limited edition “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights” t-shirt with the proceeds going to the fund. Lauper designed the t-shirt with the support of her good friend Lisa Glines. The shirt will be available through Bonfire.
Lauper had first released this t-shirt back in 2017 when the message was used on signs at the Women’s March that had raised over $250,000. This was for Planned Parenthood and True Colors United.
“We Must Push Back”
Lauper shares this statement about the fund. “I never thought I would see the day that a fundamental civil right for half of the population would be taken away in this country. We must push back, which is why I am launching the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund at the Tides Foundation.”
Lauper adds, “Foundation. It is more important than ever that organizations advancing women’s rights and outreach programs ensuring access to safe and legal abortion, reproductive health, and prenatal care have the financial resources they need to do their life-saving work.”
The statement concludes, “We will do all we can to support them, starting with funds raised from the new Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights t-shirt I am releasing today. I believe in the United States and I believe that we will not only regain the right to choose, but one day actually secure full equality.”
Lauper has also decided to re-release her abortion rights single called Sally’s Pigeons back in June. She went back into the studio just after the Supreme Court made their decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. First released back in 1993, she wrote the single with Mary Chapin Carpenter to share the so common experience of the numerous amounts of women who died as a result of back-alley abortions.
The women’s deaths were all over newspapers before Roe vs. Wade was a thing 50 years ago. As Lauper is a prime advocate, she has been fighting for those whose stories have been ignored for decades. She has been working with countless organizations time and time again which most have focused mainly on the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood.
Lauper co- founded True Colors United back in 2008 to bring an end to homelessness across the LGBTQ+. They make up just about 40 percent of the 4.2 million youth across the United States. Over the past 14 years, the nonprofit organization has had an obscene impact on ending the youth homelessness.
To support Lauper’s new fund, go to cyndilauper.com/fund.
To learn more information about Lauper go to shorefire.com/roster/cyndi-lauper.
