Malala Yousafzai's New Spotify Playlist For International Women's Day Is FULL Of Bangers

It's International Women's Day, and in celebration, Starbucks (led, I assume, by its powerful mermaid icon) is announcing a few majorly cool initiatives. First is that that Starbucks Foundation is continuing in its goal laid out in March 2018 to help empower 250,000 women and girls around the world through different organizations by 2025. Second is that Starbucks is launching a social campaign #stronglikecoffee, featuring female partners from diverse backgrounds across the company. Third is that Starbucks partnered with Malala Yousafzai to drop a Spotify playlist celebrating women all over the world, which I am more excited about than any musical event that has preceded it in my entire existence.

A bit of background, for anyone who missed Starbucks' announcement last year: the Starbucks Foundation committed to empowering women and girls all over the world by laying out a plan to support several key organizations throughout the next few years. Among them are the Malala Fund, committed to making education more accessible to girls worldwide, and spreading a network of education advocates. The full list of list organizations empowering women and girls through that the Starbucks Foundation has pledged to help can be found here; per Starbucks, as of 2019, the foundation has issued over four million dollars in grants, and will continue to support the improvement of women's lives internationally.

In celebration of these continuing initiatives, Starbucks announced on March 8 that Malala Yousafzai curated a Starbucks playlist on Spotify, "featuring specially curated songs by female artists from around the world." It features popular artists like Camilla Cabello, Solange, and Dua Lipa, with a mix of recent and past hits — all of which project confidence, empowerment, and, y'know, mightily impressive vocals. Not only is it accessible for all of your empowering music needs, but Starbucks will be playing it in over 10,000 store locations in the U.S. and Canada. Here's the playlist, so you can go ahead and start jamming right now.

Aside from recognition of Starbucks' persisting efforts to help women around the world and this new playlist of bops, International Women's Day also saw the launch of Starbucks' new #stronglikecoffee campaign, featuring women across all tiers of the company from a variety of backgrounds, telling their own stories in their own words.

If you head over to the main Twitter for Starbucks, you'll see the first few that have rolled out, all of them threaded together — among them are the leader of the Gender Empowerment Program for tea farmers in Kenya, a food scientist, a barista, a senior specialist Global Social Impact, and more, giving readers a behind-the-scenes look at Starbucks' female partners that are impacting customers' and fellow employees' lives in amazing ways every day.

You can find out more about Starbucks' ongoing efforts through the Starbucks Foundation's website here; in the meantime, queue up your Spotify playlist or head over to your local Starbucks to hear Malala Yousafzai's Spotify playlist of total bangers (which you better believe features Starbucks' latest ambassador/your favorite drink on the menu, one Ariana Grande).