For you Maddison, with love.
You can move mountains. It begins here.
Always & forever, Auntie Grace x
Written by Grace Carter, Founder of NOVA
& The Metamorphose Group.
For some time, I have wanted all of our brands within The Metamorphose Group to meaningfully support a charity, which I diligently began researching. There are a wonderful number of charities and organisations out there that champion girls and women, so I planned to partner up with one of those.
However, my niece changed that.
I asked her if she wanted to help me upload content to one of our e-commerce brands to learn some new skills and earn some extra money. She lives in one of the most deprived areas in Leicester, with drug raids and a high volume of unemployment on the doorstep. I thought it’d be a fantastic and unique opportunity for her. She is incredibly passionate about learning, a driven individual, and was keen to help.
Until we hit a snag.
As I looked through the tasks that needed doing, I realised she needed access to a laptop where she could download lots of files. I asked her mum if they had access. She didn’t. Her mum - a single parent, doing an amazing job of single-handedly bringing up her two girls - said she had looked into getting one on credit for £11 per month, but couldn’t because of her credit rating. It opened my eyes to how much of a privilege good access to technology can be.
Until then, it had never really occurred to me how important my laptop was in setting up my business venture. I funded Aphra with absolutely nothing but hard work, graft – and my trusty laptop – at my dining table. Without that, I’d have been screwed too. I use my laptop every single day, without fail – and if my girls needed a computer, they’d have instant and easy access.
It occurred to me that my niece won’t be alone, and reinforced my belief that for many young girls with a desire to achieve great things in life, there are an exceptional number of hurdles along the way – from gender bias to ethnicity, mental health to self-esteem, hormones to tech – that could eventually become too tiring to continue jumping over. The more you need to jump, and the higher they are, the more chance you won’t ever see the race through.
And so, with that, I decided to set up Nova. For my niece. Along with all the other hundreds of girls across the UK who I believe deserve a chance to succeed in making their dreams happen.
Nova is a girl’s name of Latin origin. It is derived from “novus”, meaning new. Nova is also an astronomic term given to bright stars that appear suddenly in the sky and release powerful energy. For a long time, I toyed with the idea of it being a name for my daughter. Now I realise I was holding it back because I needed it for something, and someone, else.
It’s not just a name for my daughter, but for everyone else’s too.
