Payton McGriff made a remarkable decision her senior year at the University of Idaho.

It was her final semester in the spring of 2017, and she turned down a job offer she had been dreaming of in a field she had been working toward her whole college career.

But an entrepreneur class project and a spur-of-the-moment spring break trip that semester to the African nation of Togo changed her perspective on the world — and the impact she could have on it.

The idea that was burning in her was to provide girls in Africa with school uniforms so that they could overcome a major obstacle to getting an education.

Meeting those young girls on that spring break trip to Togo in 2017 — girls who could be helped by her idea — made her decision to turn down the job offer an easy one.

“It was like, OK, these are no longer statistics, these are no longer stories,” McGriff told me in an interview last week at a local coffee shop. “These are real people that I have met, and I have now seen this challenge firsthand. And this problem is solvable.”

That was seven years ago, and today that nonprofit organization McGriff started fresh out of college, Style Her Empowered, or SHE for short, has helped 6,095 girls get an education and helped dozens of women earn a living.

For her work, McGriff, 29, now a Boise resident, was just named one of the 2024 CNN Heroes.

Her journey to this point is a truly inspiring story.

How it all began

It started with a book.

While McGriff, who is originally from Idaho Falls, was interning as a college student at the Idaho National Laboratory, she read “Half the Sky,” a book about the plight of girls and women around the world.

“What stood out to me in this book is just how important girls’ education is in reversing all of the gender inequalities that persist,” she said.

In her final semester at U of I, she took an entrepreneurship class, in which she had to come up with a project.

She remembered the book and recalled that one of the most cost-effective ways to keep girls in school is to provide free school uniforms.

So she started putting together a business plan to make it happen.

Spring break trip to Togo

A friend who read her business plan recommended that she talk to Romuald Afatchao, a professor of global studies at the University of Idaho who is originally from Togo.

She connected with Afatchao that March, and he liked the idea so much, he made a bold suggestion: He was taking a group of students to Togo for spring break in 11 days, and he invited her to go with them.

“So 11 days later, I found myself in Togo, and that’s when it really became more than a school project for me,” McGriff said.

There she met with local community members, administrators and, most importantly, junior high and high school girls.

She asked a group of girls a series of questions about barriers to going to school, and by far the No. 1 reason was the school uniforms.

She also met a girl named Elolo, who became her inspiration and her focus when developing her idea.

Pitch competitions

McGriff came back to the U.S. and put together a business plan for the nonprofit and started pitching the idea at entrepreneurship pitch competitions.

Because her idea was a nonprofit among mostly for-profit business ideas, she didn’t expect to do well.

“So I’m like, I’ll get a little pat on the head and like, ‘keep going’ type of reaction,” she said. “But I was able to win all of those competitions, which raised about $35,000 to start with.”

At the same time, McGriff was getting ready to graduate from college and interviewing for jobs when she received an offer from what she considered at the time to be her dream job doing marketing analytics.

Accepting the job would have been the easy route.

But she turned it down.

She said her experience in Togo over that spring break convinced her to pursue her nonprofit idea.

After graduating, McGriff flew back to Togo to get the program up and running.

Day in the life

One of the most important things she did that summer was spend time with Elolo to see what a real day in the life was like.

It was eye opening.

They woke up at 3:30 a.m. to start preparing rice for Elolo’s mother, who sold rice at the market, the family’s only source of income. Then it was fetching water, cooking breakfast and cleaning the house.

“So I’m just beginning to see that literally every waking hour is dedicated to work for girls because they are expected to do 100% of the household chores,” she said.

The original idea for the school uniforms was for the girls to sew them themselves, but clearly that was not feasible.

“That was when I realized, OK, the first idea, no chance, like there’s literally no additional time for our girls to learn this skill,” McGriff said. “And it kind of felt like introducing an additional barrier and responsibility for them to get themselves to school.”

So the idea evolved into hiring local seamstresses to make the uniforms. That would have a double benefit: Make uniforms for schoolgirls while at the same time boost the economic status of local women.

Hiring the seamstresses, in itself, was a revelation.

“What I came to learn is this is one of the primary trades that families will put their daughters into because it doesn’t require a high level of literacy, and it’s kind of a last-ditch option,” McGriff said. “It really became clear to me this is what our girls who don’t get the chance to go to school, (this is) where they go. And so that was when we started looking at creating jobs for these young women.”

Empowering women

At the beginning, SHE employed two seamstresses who made uniforms for 65 girls.

Today, Style Her Empowered is in 21 communities in Togo and employs 34 women, including 22 seamstresses, and one man. SHE pays about 75% higher than minimum wage, McGriff said.

“You can just see the transformation of a woman who goes from having no income and no way to support herself to now becoming the primary breadwinner for her family,” McGriff said. “If you’re a seamstress, you’re kind of looked down in society. But now they say, ‘We walk around like kings. People know we work at SHE. We walk around very, very respected in the community.’”

Not only that, but McGriff and her team are working on making the venture self-sustaining by taking on work that they sell to the private sector.

SHE brought in about $178,000 in revenue last year, of which about two-thirds were grants and almost a quarter in donations. About 5% came from earned revenue in private sales, according to SHE’s latest annual report.

Today, there are about 1,500 girls in the program, and SHE is planning to increase enrollment to 2,000 this fall. In all, SHE has provided more than 6,000 education sponsorships.

Every girl in the SHE program receives a uniform, a full scholarship, school supplies, menstrual supplies, year-round tutoring and support in SHE’s after-school program.

Uniform that grows

One thing that struck me about SHE is that they make “uniforms that grow”; they’re adjustable so that a girl can keep wearing it as she gets bigger.

It reminded me of another local nonprofit, The Shoe That Grows, started by Kenton Lee, of Nampa. It’s the same concept: shoes that are adjustable and can be made bigger as a child’s feet grow.

McGriff had read about The Shoe That Grows before in an article her father had shared with her, but she had no idea that the similar nonprofit was just down the road.

SHE had experimented with an adjustable uniform, but early iterations didn’t work out. The idea was abandoned until McGriff met Lee, who later became a SHE board member.

The uniform can grow up to six sizes and 12 inches in length so it can be worn for years.

“I remember the first year we actually had our design, this young girl goes up and says, ‘I feel like the daughter of a dignitary,’” McGriff said. “She was so proud and so excited.”

SHE today

McGriff was SHE’s 21st employee. She volunteered her time for the first three years. Picking up jobs here and there and relying on her husband’s income allowed her to forgo a salary to make sure SHE was up and running.

And McGriff remains SHE’s only employee in the United States. All of SHE’s other employees are in Togo, including SHE’s administration, seamstresses and teachers.

Remember Elolo, the young girl McGriff met on that first spring break trip? She graduated in 2021 and is now SHE’s assistant director.

CNN Hero

McGriff said the CNN Hero award was a long time in the making. She said the vetting process was nearly two years and included extensive interviews with more than a dozen people.

But then word finally came earlier this year that she had been selected.

“I was just so honored,” she said, adding that the CNN producer acknowledged that McGriff’s story was different in that SHE is seeking to empower the local women to lead the program on their own. “So I think being seen for what we really intended was just such an honor because they had done so much to get to know us for what we’re really trying to build. It just felt like all of us.”

The segments aired on CNN last week, and the reaction has been tremendous, McGriff said.

“It’s been pretty overwhelming and spectacular,” McGriff said.

SHE has raised about $50,000 since that story aired, with donations from all over the world.

“We get messages every day from people from France, from Ireland who have heard our story, and it resonates with them, and they want to support us in some way,” she said. “So it’s been a pretty immediate change in opportunity and doors opening that allow us to move closer to the vision that we’ve been dreaming about for so long.”

Ever since that spring break trip in 2017.

What you can do

To learn more about SHE and to donate, visit www.StyleHerEmpowered.org.

Watch party

SHE is throwing a watch party from 7-9 p.m., Wednesday, July 31, at the Idaho Film Society, 1212 W. Bannock St., Boise. They’ll show the CNN Hero segment and then have a Q&A session after. It’s free and open to the public.