Girls For A Change

Girls For A Change
Metro area Silicon Valley, California
Country United States
Founded 2002
Org. type Non Profit, 501(c)3
Website www.girlsforachange.org

Girls For A Change (GFC) is a national organization that empowers girls to create social change. The organization invites young women to design, lead, fund and implement social change projects that tackle issues girls face in their own neighborhoods.

Mission

GFC empowers girls for personal and social transformation. The program inspires girls to have the voice, ability and problem solving capacity to speak up, be decision makers, create visionary change and realize their full potential.

Vision

Through GFC, girls develop the voice, ability and problem solving capacity to speak up, be decision makers, create visionary change and realize their full potential. GFC seeks to address the very heart of issues confronting girls – increasing confidence in their own voice and convictions, developing life-skills, and improving the ability to identify paths and resources within their communities that can contribute to positive change and break cycles for a lifetime.

GFC envisions a world where girls with strong voices become active leaders and passionately engaged citizens, impacting not only their own neighborhoods but also their nations as girls become informed and participating citizens in their civic, political and cultural communities. By connecting them with adult women trained to serve as volunteer coaches, girls develop trusted relationships with powerful role models for civic engagement while women become strong advocates for girls and their neighborhoods.

Origins

In 1999, co-founder and CEO Whitney Smith created an initiative in California to address growing concerns of girls feeling helpless in the face of community problems. A Steering Committee (later the Board of Directors) was set up.

In 2002, Niko Clifford joined the staff and helped expand the organization through multiple partnerships.

Model

Girl Action Teams

In Silicon Valley, Phoenix, and Richmond, Girls For A Change offers free after school programming for middle- and high-school girls. These Action Teams, composed of 5-30 girls and two adult female coaches, identify challenges in their communities and design and implement creative solutions to address them as a team following GFC's 7 Steps of Social Change.

Change Your World Trainings

Starting in 2008, GFC began offering this day-long conference at a variety of venues (including corporate seminars, youth-empowerment conventions, and schools). During the workshop, women and girls are taught the basics of social change and given the tools to create change in their community. The trainings also include a history of powerful social change makers and encouraged girls to identify their own social change agent inspirations.

Let's Go

A modified and adaptable version of the Girl Action Teams, to be launched in Fall 2013.

Media coverage

Girls For A Change has been featured in well known publications such as the Washington Post,[1] the San Jose Mercury News,[2] and the Huffington Post.[3]

Notable Partnerships

Miss Representation

In 2011, Girls For A Change began a partnership with Miss Representation, a documentary film and associated non-profit that "explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions by circulating limited and often disparaging portrayals of women."[4]

Girls For A Change developed the Social Action Representative program with MissRepresentation.org and helps create bi-monthly action alerts which call the public to action on sexism and gender inequity in the media and provides resources and tools for action. The most well known of these campaigns is #NotBuyingIt, which has been used internationally on Twitter to call attention to misogynistic materials and incidents in the media.

U By Kotex

In 2010 Girls For A Change began an ongoing partnership with U By Kotex®, Kotex's brand aimed at young women which also seeks to empower women and girls to celebrate their bodies and talk openly about periods and vaginal care. Girls For A Change developed curriculum for Love Your Body, Change Your World trainings, which have traveled all over the US and Canada from 2010 to 2012.

In 2013, U By Kotex® - in partnership with GFC - launched Generation Know*, a program that encourages young women to know their bodies, reject myths that impact their health, and inspires them to educate their peers. Girls For A Change developed new curriculum for a Get In The Know* international tour, which took place January - April 2013. The organization also developed the Girl Ambassador Program, which trained 28 college-age young women to create social change in the areas of vaginal health care, body positivity, and the mission of Generation Know*. The Ambassadors represent Girls For A Change and U By Kotex®'s initiative and lead social action movements targeting these issues in their communities.

Other partners (past or present) include Sephora, Nike, U By Kotex, and Miss Representation, meSheeky, Eileen Fisher, and Theta Nu Xi Multicultural Sorority, Inc.

References

  1. ↑ http://girlsforachange.typepad.com/national/files/GirlPower-washingtonpost.pdf
  2. ↑ http://www.girlsforachange.org/national/files/chung__peace_one_girl_at_a_time_san_jose_mercury_news.pdf
  3. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/courtney-macavinta/girls-for-a-change_b_49144.html
  4. ↑ http://www.missrepresentation.org
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