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When Kelly Honest began the Polished Pebbles Ladies Mentoring Program in 2009, it was to present younger girls and women from the city of Chicago the chance to see what’s attainable when somebody believes in you and invests in your future.
Now, 15 years and over 5000 women served later; she says she will be able to present the ladies in her life expertise and profession readiness-focused group that if you present up and keep constant, being acknowledged and dealing with greats like Former First Girl Michelle Obama could be the norm.
On Tuesday, Polished Pebbles Ladies Mentoring Program was one in every of 14 Chicago-based girls-serving organizations named by the Obama Basis’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, based by Mrs. Obama, to obtain $500K in funding. The chosen Chicago-based organizations help women’ lives in numerous methods, together with by means of mentorship and management growth, sports activities and dance packages, and work-study packages.
“For Michelle Obama to make such a dedication to us, it says that ‘I’m invested in our women right here in Chicago’; due to this fact, I’m additionally invested within the leaders of the organizations and the expansion of the organizations. That’s highly effective.” Honest shared with ESSENCE.
“Now, we’re normalizing for our women that if you take part in packages like this, you construct sisterhood, you construct expertise, you get alternatives to construct a future, and now you’re rubbing shoulders with a mirrored image of who you actually are. It will probably’t get any higher than seeing a mirrored image of you thru the previous First Girl Michelle Obama,” she added.
The Ladies Alternative Alliance Fund will help Polished Pebbles’ Each Woman is a CEO (EGCEO) Summer time Work-Examine program with $50,000 in funding. EGCEO is a six-week skilled growth program that mixes workshops and hands-on coaching to arrange women for achievement within the office. This system has employed over 400 women to this point.
Total, about 1,800 adolescent women in Chicago will profit from the funds given to those native organizations, most of which have been based by Black girls and purpose to empower them.
With a imaginative and prescient laid out by Mrs. Obama, the Ladies Alternative Alliance will help packages that can attain women within the South and West Sides of Chicago significantly in Woodlawn, South Shore, and Washington Park, that are neighborhoods surrounding the longer term residence of the Obama Presidential Heart.
“Chicago is the place that made me who I’m. It’s the place that formed me, developed my self-confidence, and helped me uncover my voice. There’s an vitality to this metropolis that’s like no different— an vitality that lifts, conjures up and nurtures,” stated Mrs. Obama in a video asserting the massive information and main funding in grassroots organizations from her hometown.
“That’s why I couldn’t be extra thrilled to share that the Ladies Alternative Alliance is increasing our work proper right here in my favourite metropolis,” Mrs. Obama continued.
Along with funding, these organizations and their leaders will obtain programming help, Obama Basis programming, and in-person convening that includes Mrs. Obama and former President Obama.
“It’s been life-changing and I might say one factor I’m actually happy with is that they [The Obama Foundation} started a network to bring together leaders, leaders that are supporting girls across the city, which is meaningful,” said Shatina M. Edwards, founder of Manage-Emotions-Avoid-Negativity Girls Empowerment, or M.E.A.N.
“The Girls Opportunity Alliance has done a great job of amplifying that the girls we serve here in Chicago matter. They have dreams, their dreams matter, their hopes matter.”
The organization aims to prevent bullying and empower young ladies to avoid negativity, build self-confidence, and pursue their goals. The Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund will support the organization’s Girls Health Matters Initiative with $50,000 in funding. Edwards says the funds will be used to repurpose a transit van that will be used as a mobile health clinic for community outreach. They will offer health assessments, health boxes, nutrition, mental health, and reproductive health workshops.
“Our goal is to distribute over 700 health boxes to girls within our community this year. So, we will host pop-up assemblies at different schools throughout Chicago. And we will also host events at local community centers and churches. We have several girls that travel more than 30 miles to attend our programs, so this mobile resource van will allow us to take our programs and events to their communities, which is so big,” Edwards shared. “It is a game changer.”
“The Girls Opportunity Alliance has helped to provide that connective tissue to bring us together,” Edwards added.
Kelley Fair agrees, noting that not only has the alliance helped amplify their work, but it has filled in the gaps that can sometimes exist for promising girls from often underserved communities.
“Before we can get to talking about helping these girls become a part of the change makers that close all these other gaps, we gotta close the hope gap because they’ve got dreams, but if they’re uninvested in and nobody’s paying attention to them, our girls become quite hopeless,” she said. “The Girls Opportunity Alliance has done a great job of amplifying that the girls we serve here in Chicago matter. They have dreams, their dreams matter, their hopes matter.”
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