Earlier this month, the Inspiring Girls Foundation held its 7th annual awards ceremony at the Official College of Architects in Madrid. The goal? To spotlight people and projects that show Spanish girls today what they could become tomorrow.
This year’s awards went to three very different recipients: a scientist, an engineer, and a company. Three different approaches to leadership with one shared trait: Each, in their own way, mixes social purpose with practical action.
This begs the question: is inspiration still just about symbolic role models, or is it finally being measured by real-world impact? And what happens when these role models step down from the pedestal and into the classroom, the lab, or the community?
One of the night’s winners may provide some clues.
Elena García Armada, who was awarded the “Woman of Inspiration,” is an industrial engineer who developed the ATLAS pediatric exoskeleton – a pioneering technology that improves mobility for children with paralysis.
Her personal achievement begs another question: what kind of aspirations take root when young girls see that engineering isn’t just circuits and code, but also empathy, movement, and care? And what could happen if an example like García Armada – a woman in STEM who builds solutions with heart – were a fixture in school curricula, and not an exception?
In rural towns across Aragón, Galicia, and Madrid, children aged eight to 12 are now getting a crash course in digital literacy, thanks to Digitalización sin Límites (Digitalization without Limits), a joint initiative by Inspiring Girls and Stellantis, which won the Company of Inspiration award.
But this isn’t supposedly just about teaching kids how to browse the web or post responsibly on social media. The program also includes training for 50 unemployed rural women, some of whom will become the very instructors who teach these digital skills. It’s a two-in-one solution: empower kids with knowledge and women with employment pathways.
Across Europe, 35% of the population still lacks basic digital skills, while 90% of jobs already require them. So, what happens when we teach a 10-year-old girl how to navigate the digital world? Maybe she avoids becoming part of the next generation excluded from opportunity.
As Rocío López, HR Director at Stellantis Iberia, put it: “Our commitment to corporate social responsibility reflects our mission to support the communities where we operate. Through initiatives like these, we promote education, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.”
Programs like this one aren’t just educational workshops. They’re early equity infrastructure. They step in where markets fail, where policies take too long. And they focus on kids at exactly the right age when many girls quietly decide what they won’t become.
The event’s third award recipient, Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, is the founder of AUARA, a social enterprise that reinvests 100% of its profits into clean water projects around developing countries. Over 100,000 people in extreme poverty have already benefited.
In many regions, the responsibility of collecting water falls to girls, who often have to skip school to do it. So, a single water well can mean the difference between staying home and showing up to learn. And yes, a bottle of water might seem like a small gesture. But if that bottle funds infrastructure that gives a girl her education back?
It raises another important question: if companies can create this kind of sustained social impact, how can public policy keep up?
“Inspiration” is one of those words that gets used so much, it can start to lose its shape. But this year’s Inspiring Girls Awards did more than tell feel-good stories. They showcased outcomes. Kids walking again. Girls coding. Girls going to school because they don’t have to fetch water first.
So, what’s next? Can inspiration become policy? Infrastructure? Long-term investment? Maybe that’s the real challenge making sure that the idea of “being inspired” doesn’t stop at applause or hashtags. Because planting the seed is just the beginning. If we really want it to grow, we need soil, water, light and time.