The coolest 14-year-old is raising money to send 1,000 girls to see 'A Wrinkle in Time'
Sometimes a movie comes along and has such a powerful impact on the world that it inspires a wave of charitable efforts.
The latest film to do so is Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time, based on Madeleine L’Engle's popular science fiction-fantasy novel.
The movie, which has a female-heavy cast, stars inspirational women of color like Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, and Storm Reid. With the desire for girls around the world to see the powerful cast in action, 14-year-old Taylor Richardson set out to raise money to purchase hundreds of tickets for them.
On Wednesday's episode of Good Morning America, Richardson explained that she began the Wrinkle in Time campaign because "representation matters."
"I wanted all girls, especially girls of color, to know they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up and also can struggle and have flaws and still be successful in life," she said.
On her GoFundMe page, Richardson set an initial goal of $15,000 to buy private screening tickets for 1,000 girls to see the film and give them each a copy of the book, but had already raised $20,532 at the time of writing this article. She'll also pay for chaperones.
When describing why it was so important to her for girls to see the movie, Richardson explained that "it shows young, black girls deserving a chance to be a part of the sci-fi cultural canon."
She went on to note that the film puts a girl who looks just like her in a main role, and it's "a fantasy film that is not about some white boys fighting evil, but about a black girl overcoming it."
A growing effort to share meaningful cinema
If Richardson's name sounds familiar it's because last year, when she was 13 years old, she created a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising funds to send 100 girls to see Hidden Figures — a film that tells the true story of three brilliant black women at NASA working to help launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit.
Through her efforts, she was able to raise more than $18,000 and send 1,000 girls to see the educational film in Jacksonville, Florida.
"It's important that girls not only look at the stars but take the steps to reach for them," she wrote on her GoFundMe page. "I believe seeing this movie will give us girls the inspiration we need to say I can be can be a mathematician, an engineer, or better yet an astronaut!"
Richardson isn't the only one taking action to ensure movies with representation of people of color are properly seen.
Chance the Rapper has sent fans in Chicago to see Marshall and Get Out for free. And Hidden Figures actress Octavia Spencer bought out a theater in Los Angeles so low-income families would be able to see the film, inspiring some of her co-stars like Taraji P. Henson to do the same.
Spencer recently bought out a theater in Mississippi so kids could see Black Panther, and everyday people like Frederick Joseph have launched efforts like the Black Panther Challenge, which raised $40,000 to take children in Harlem to see the film. So far the GoFundMe campaigns for Black Panther tickets have raised more than $620,000, and thousands of children have been able to see the movie for free.
Now this is a trend we can definitely get behind.
Topics Activism Marvel Social Good
Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.
