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Why we're Inspiring Girls
We’re supporting Inspiring Girls because our Atlantic row is about more than miles on the ocean – it’s about showing the next generation of girls what becomes possible when you refuse to shrink your ambition.
Inspiring Girls International exists to connect 11-16-year-old girls with diverse female role models so they can expand their career ambitions, challenge stereotypes, and build the confidence to pursue their own paths. As a team built on the values of empowerment, wellbeing and personal growth, gROW wanted a charity partner whose mission directly reflects our belief that potential should never be limited by gender, background or expectation. Rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic gives us a platform; partnering with Inspiring Girls helps ensure that platform is used to lift others as we push ourselves.
Vicki’s role as UK Ambassador
Vicki is the proud UK Ambassador for Inspiring Girls, an international charity active in more than 40 countries and founded to raise the aspirations of girls around the world. In that role, she regularly fundraises for the charity through her endurance feats and uses her story to encourage women and girls to pursue their potential, even when it feels out of reach. Supporting Inspiring Girls through Team gROW is a natural extension of work she is already doing in schools, organisations and communities to bring more visible female role models into girls’ everyday lives.
Inspiring Girls is built on a simple idea: when girls see women doing things they have been told are “not for them”, their sense of what is possible changes. By connecting girls with women from many different backgrounds and careers, the charity helps them gain skills, confidence and inspiration that they might not otherwise access. Our Atlantic campaign is one more touchpoint in that network of stories – a visible, messy, human example of two women taking on something extreme, not because it is easy, but because it sends a powerful signal about what girls are capable of.
Why this row and why now?
Rowing an ocean is an exercise in emotional endurance as much as physical resilience, and that is exactly the space Vicki and Sophie are passionate about demystifying. Between them, they have spent years working at the intersection of science, mindset and performance, helping people understand that high performance is not reserved for an elite few – it can be learned, practised and shared. Taking on the Atlantic gives them a live, real-time case study in everything they teach: managing fear, navigating uncertainty, staying connected as a team, and continuing to move when conditions are far from perfectFor younger girls watching, it is not the record attempts or the race positions that matter most; it is seeing two women who are willing to be seen trying, failing, learning and getting back up again. Vicki and Sophie hope that somewhere a teenage girl who has been told she is “too much” or “not enough” will catch a glimpse of the campaign, or a clip from the row, and recognise something of herself in it. That moment of recognition – “she looks a bit like me, and she’s doing that” – can be the spark that changes the direction of a life.
A message to the girl who’s watching
So much of this campaign comes down to one simple question that Vicki returns to whenever the challenge feels overwhelming. As she puts it: “any time I face something that feels impossible, I ask myself a simple question ‘if one girl who has been told she’s too much, or not enough sees this and thinks ‘maybe I can’ is it worth it? And the answer is always yes.’”
That is why Team gROW are supporting Inspiring Girls. Every mile we row, every headwind we face, and every uncomfortable decision to keep going when it would be easier to stop is, in some small way, an invitation. An invitation to one girl, somewhere in the world, to see our oars in the water, feel a flicker of recognition, and decide to back herself a little more boldly than she did yesterday.
Vicki Anstey
Vicki Anstey is a 2 x world record holder, adventurer, coach, TEDx speaker, and entrepreneur. After a decade running a successful fitness business, she turned to extreme endurance — rowing the mid-Pacific, cycling 3,000 miles across America, and completing ultra-distance foot races in the Arctic and Kenya. A UK ambassador for Inspiring Girls, Vicki is passionate about emotional endurance and empowering the next generation to thrive under pressure.