New Mum and Award Winning Entrepreneur brings Women Together to Inspire the Future of Young Girls
This International Women’s Day a leading entrepreneur is spearheading activity that is bringing together women from across the world to inspire the females of our future. She uses her entrepreneurial skills, her publishing expertise and her passion driven by her love for her new baby daughter to make an impact on this year’s IWD campaign, #BalanceForBetter.
Abigail Horne hopes to make this book a best-seller, as royalties from the book will provide scholarships through ‘Your Future Self’ – an academy set up to help young people transition into adulthood. Monies will help fund scholarship places for young adults to attend self- development retreats as part of her commitment to empower the next generation of women. To achieve this Abi is launching the book for just 99p on 8th March (available on Amazon) and hopes as many people as possible will download it within the first few hours to enable her to reach as wide an audience as possible, raise maximum funds, and achieve best-seller status for all the authors involved. Being a teenage girl today is hard… a little support can go a long way.
Alarming facts:
· 1 in 4 girls will self-harm before they leave school. There has been a 70% increase in 10-14 tear olds attending A&E for self-harm. (www.nice.org.uk and www.hacic.gov.uk)
· Girls as young as 5 are worrying about their weight. By the age of 10 years old 80% of girls will be on a diet to change their body shape. (APPG Report 2012 and Common Sense Media 21/1/15)
· 47% of girls feel the pressure to look attractive is a disadvantage to being a girl – this figure rises to 76% for 15/16 year olds. (APPG Report 2012)
· Teenage girls are now more likely to suffer partner abuse than any other age group. 12.7% of girls aged 16-19 have experienced domestic abuse in the last year alone. (British Crime Survey 2010)
· 33% of girls aged 13-17 have experienced some form of sexual abuse. (NSPCC 2009)
· 68% of female university students experience sexual harassment on campus. (NUS Hidden Marks Survey 2010)
· Girls are now 3x more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety than boys, and on any given day up to 5% of girls aged 12-17 will be prescribed anti-depressants. (Nuffield Foundations, Social Trends in Adolescent Mental Health 2013)
31 year old Abigail Horne is a best selling author and founder of Authors&Co, helping women leave a legacy through creating bestsellers. Abi has created this passion project having felt compelled to show young women how to be kinder to themselves, love and value themselves and feel empowered to create the futures they desire.
Alongside her work as founder of Female Success Network - a community that supports female entrepreneurs - this will be the 20th book that Abigail has launched; the other 19 have all been best-sellers.
The collaboration book ‘The Woman I’m Becoming’ is a celebration of both World Book Day and International Women’s Day in one. It brings together female entrepreneurs from across the globe, all of whom are experts in their field, to share their stories, reflections, advice and guidance on subjects from money, health, and relationships to self-worth, wellbeing and authenticity.
Abigail hopes to make this year one to remember and celebrate for the 21 co-authors involved who are not only expected to become best selling authors within hours of its release, but also leave a legacy for future generations.
This year’s theme for IWD is #BalanceForBetter, with the aim of building a gender-balanced world through collaboration, and that is exactly what Authors&Co publishers have done: collaborated to try and achieve balance.
Authors&Co are looking for local women to join their social media campaign - they’d like thousands of women across the globe to collaborate on the 8th March by sharing their rallying message simultaneously to further increase the impact. Join the social group on Facebook.
The Mumpreneur, who was showcased in 2018 by Forbes as one of the hottest Female Entrepreneurs to watch, said: “ I set about bringing this International Women’s Day book to life when I was 20 weeks pregnant, after finding out I was having a baby girl. Within 2 days of asking others to come on board, I had been inundated by messages from other women from around the globe who wanted to be a part of this very special book aimed at empowering 14-18 year olds.”
In the foreword, Abigail Horne dedicates the book to her 9-week-old daughter Polly Rae Horne. She said; “I have dedicated my career to supporting women, but on finding out I was having you my precious angel, my soul set on fire with desire to support the incredible females of our future. My purpose in life is to show you what is possible Polly, so dream big my sweet girl.”
Abigail continued; “Writing a book is leaving a legacy, it’s giving a part of yourself to the future to last for all time. My hope is that one day, when I’m no longer here, (hopefully when I'm super old after a lifetime of happiness with my family) people won't have to rely on their memories to recall what I stood for. Future generations will KNOW what I lived for because piece by piece I'm leaving my legacy in books. I'm here to make an impact, one that long surpasses my lifetime... and there is no feeling quite like it.”
In 2017 Abigail proudly became a number 1 best-selling author in multiple categories on Amazon with her collaborative book ‘She Made it Happen’ where she openly shared her story of burnout and rising from the ashes. Following this success, Abigail co-founded and launched Authors&Co - helping women globally to become “best-selling authors” in their chosen industries.
Authors&Co has already changed the lives of many women and female entrepreneurs from around the world, having helped over forty women globally to become best-selling authors, whilst reaching millions of readers worldwide.
Following the launch of the International Women’s Day book, Authors&Co is hosting a charity meet and greet event with some of the authors. Money raised at this event will be donated to “Your Future Self Academy” to fund scholarship places for young adults to attend self-development retreats. Alison Goodwin, Founder of Your Future Self, said: “We are delighted to be supported by this book launch event. We help young adults with: Mindset, Team Building, Sports, Employability Skills, Leadership, Goals and Money Management. Our retreats are pioneering, transformative, guaranteed to be fun, and will help young adults authentically connect with their peers. The retreats are an opportunity for young people to feel empowered when making career choices; this will be achieved by helping them explore extracurricular activities in a stimulating learning environment.”
To find out more about how to support the book please visit - https://authorsandco.com/.
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