the first designer that I worked with, his name is Pathé’O. He just did a collaboration with Dior. I remember the first time, before I reached to his office, I did not know where it was. I walked three hours from this area to another one to another one to another one. Finally I reached his office, and I introduced myself. I said, “Just try clothes on me and pay me so I can go to school.” So, you know —

n the last year, thousands of people from the North of Burkina Faso have been forced to run from their home because they’re facing terrorist attacks. Many Christians were killed in their churches because they refused to convert to Islam. I strongly believe that terrorism has no religion, radical ideologies can infect any group.

After years of living what she calls the “glamorous life” in New York, Paris and Milan, supermodel Georgie Badiel, the former Miss Burkina Faso and Miss Africa, is focusing her efforts on water activism in her home country.

Malgré des progrès, il y a encore des milliards de personnes considérées comme des «laissés pour compte» dans l'accès à l'eau potable et à l'assainissement. Suivez depuis New York, l'auteure, militante et mannequin connue, Georgie Badiel Liberty.

Burkinabe model Georgie Badiel is a real superheroine. While living and thriving in New York City, she was looking for creative ways to help her village back home in Burkina Faso. In 2015, she found it by first establishing the Georgie Badiel Foundation, which aims to ensure that the people there have access to clean water and sanitation facilities. A year later, she cowrote The Water Princess, a semiautobiographical children’s book about a young girl trying to bring clean water to her village.

Top fashion model turned water activist Georgie Badiel founded her water-focused Georgie Badiel Foundation in 2015. Before launching her foundation, Badiel was Miss Africa in 2004, and then became a top fashion model working for luxury brands like Marc Jacobs and Oscar de La Renta. Georgie has graced the cover of fashion’s bible, Women’s Wear Daily, and is still a working model, having recently walked in Diane Von Furstenburg’s presentation during February's New York Fashion Week.

This August, two broken wells in Tanguin Dassouri, a town in central Burkina Faso, were successfully restored, thanks in part to the fundraising and awareness campaign of a group of passionate Oceanside elementary and high school students.