Fittingly, the women of the Obama family took a multicountry tour in support of Michelle Obama’s Let Girls Learn initiative, which promotes education for young girls around the globe, and specifically in Africa for this trip.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the first lady kicked off the tour in Liberia, the African nation founded by repatriated African Americans in 1847, before moving on to Morocco and finally Spain.
On Thursday the first lady attended a lavish dinner with Moroccan Princess Lalla Salma, the wife of King Mohammed VI, wearing a black-and-white paisley-print Altuzarra maxi dress, available at Barneys for $2,995.
She was joined by daughters Sasha and Malia as well as her mother, Marian Robinson, and all four represented with beautiful patterned dresses that were appropriately striking and modest.
The trip, which Michelle Obama outlined in a blog post, saw the first lady joined by award-winning actresses and education advocates Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto and by CNN correspondent Isha Sesay, who will “work together to create a CNN film highlighting the stories of girls who are struggling to get an education.”
On Friday the first lady penned an op-ed on CNN giving further detail:
In Liberia we'll be running girls’ empowerment programs, working to end gender violence in schools, and supporting new, second-chance schools for girls who were forced to drop out because of pregnancy or rape.
In Morocco we’ll be working closely with the Moroccan government to help transform high schools across the country, and we'll be supporting new school dormitories to allow girls from rural areas to attend school far from home.
Michelle Obama ended her trip in Spain with a “simple, but urgent point: Every single one of us in countries like Spain and the U.S. has the power—and the obligation—to step up as a champion for these girls.”
Let Girls Learn will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in girls’ education. Looking good and doing good—it’s the Obama way!