About G Day

G Day was founded in Vancouver BC in 2014 by Madeleine Shaw, a social entrepreneur with a vision of marking a key moment in girls’ lives in a community context. As we gathered to watch girls symbolically take their first steps on the road to adulthood, we realized that we were not only supporting their resilience, but also our collective connection and wellbeing.

The G Day ‘village’ grew to include parents and other supportive adults in girls’ lives with a distinct program designed to better equip them to understand girls’ needs at this life stage. We also grew to other communities, where skilled, values-aligned leaders were drawn to create local expressions of G Day’s framework.

With the advent of Covid-19, we were forced to cancel further events. Our team deliberated creating online or physically distanced versions of G Day, however felt that something essential would be lost. We decided instead to offer what we think of as a ‘time capsule’: an online collection of abridged versions of our content and resources, with the goal of inspiring and resourcing others to create their own events as they are able to safely do so.

As with other time capsules, it is our hope that one day in the future G Day may be ‘re-opened’ by others in a time when events similar to the ones that were held between 2014 and 2019 (attracting up to 300 people) are again possible. In the meantime, we hope that anyone drawn to the idea of creating a rite of passage celebration for girls in their lives will find resources and inspiration here.

In 2020 G Day’s parent charity, United Girls of the World Society, transitioned to Fire and Flower, a local, values-aligned organization with programming similar in intention to G Day’s. Learn more about Fire and Flower here.