Across the globe, Nepalese student Gauri Gupta has years of journalism experience under her belt, from features on community events to stories centered around issues affecting Nepal’s citizens.
But for Gupta, those bylines mean more than just experience or pay.
“In Nepali society, women and girls are dominated in every sector like education, employment, entertainment, etc.,” Gupta said in her 2020 article on women’s liberation through academics. “So, there are few chances of girls’ schools or extra opportunities for them.”
Gupta wrote that those opportunities are usually cut short by the country’s custom of early marriage, which often happens before girls turn 18. But for more than a decade, a local program has pushed girls between 13-18 to continue their academics. And the program’s forerunner—a Tampa native based in St. Pete—wants to keep it going.
Girl Reports, a nonprofit organization founded by Vanessa Martinez in 2015, teaches journalism skills to girls in global communities that traditionally discourage them from finishing their education.
Martinez, who is also executive director of the program, said that the effort began in Nepal, where she lived in a Buddhist nunnery that was next-door to a girls’ school.
As a frequent visitor and volunteer for a grassroots nonprofit there, Martinez enjoyed working with the students—and she noticed how some were especially “bright” and inquisitive.
“Throughout my time there working with them, I thought, ‘What can I do to get all these girls in the same room?’” Martinez told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “‘What can I do with them to get them to work together, to push them, to mentor them, sort of give them a higher level training than they get in their own classrooms?’”
Despite Nepal’s devastating earthquake months earlier, Martinez started the program in her second year living there. And the girls enjoyed what she had to offer.
In fact, Martinez said when she decided to move back home to Tampa in 2017 to be with her family and support her grandparents, she saw that students didn’t want the program to end. They were determined to take more journalism courses and create their own magazines—and Martinez wanted to continue that effort too.
So, Martinez established the organization’s U.S. headquarters in St. Pete and registered it as a nonprofit in 2019.
More than a decade later, Girl Reports continues to operate with the support of interns and volunteers, alongside Nepalese schools and the Lumbini Social Service Foundation.
The program currently provides girls a seven-unit journalism curriculum that Martinez said “will never really fully be done” as it expands.
Those seven units include an introductory course, which Martinez said mostly eases students into the program and builds rapport. The last six units dive into understanding journalism and honing newsroom and multimedia skills, including photojournalism.
Martinez has no background in journalism; she’s an applied anthropologist. But she said she wanted to center journalism in the girls’ curriculum, mainly to inspire them to express themselves and inquire about the world.
Girl Reports’ site states that by providing that platform to underserved girls, the program also “helps them see they have the right to be in rooms where decisions are made.”
“I just wanted a framework that would really empower them in that way, and I felt like journalism was just such a good fit,” Martinez told CL.
For students, that framework has been essential to educating Nepalese girls beyond the usual path they’re pressured to take, Martinez said.
Since Girl Reports’ first issue, student journalists have written about specialized topics, from local sports activities and holiday traditions to the mental and physical health of citizens and violence against Nepalese women.
Girl Reports also teaches girls to conduct their research “in-country” instead of basing their findings in the U.S.
“I think it’s just a question of, ‘How can we collect the most accurate data possible in a culturally relevant way?’ And there’s no one more qualified to do that than someone who’s local,” Martinez told CL.
Martinez said the efforts of students don’t go unrewarded, as the program also promotes the economic benefits of education. Girls are paid a flat fee they could bring home to their parents.
“And those parents are thinking, ‘Wow, you are contributing economically to the household,’” Martinez said. “It really elevates the status of those girls at home. It’s planting that seed of information in the minds of the parents and the community that education has an economic value.”
For Martinez, the essence of physical media like magazines also helps further legitimize the girls’ work, as it’s a “tangible product that the girls can put in the hands of their parents” and of their community members.
“That really helps them to understand a little bit more what those kids are spending their time on,” Martinez told CL.
Martinez said she’d love opportunities to host field trips to news stations and district offices, but the program needs more funding to reach that goal.
She hopes to see Girl Reports “blossom” further, as it is entirely volunteer-based and always seeks collaborators. The organization kicked off its first annual fundraiser on Saturday, April 11—and the site regularly accepts donations.
As a graduate during the Great Recession who struggled to find opportunities for career growth—and continued to at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, years later—Martinez said the program has fulfilled her through giving others those resources.
“I felt like building my own thing was going to be a really rewarding challenge in that sense, that, ‘OK, if no one’s giving me the opportunity to lead and to create something myself, then I’m going to do it,’” Martinez told CL. “And in that sense, professionally, it has offered me tremendous growth, to be able to take an idea from its inception and create something real out of it that impacts people’s lives.”
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This article appears in Apr. 23 – 29, 2026.