Our Work
Girls Leadership Collective supports girls in owning their individual and collective power as young women. We utilize women leaders to co-create experiences with cohorts of girls in different communities that are grounded in our values of self-awareness, empathy, critical consciousness and leadership.
We encourage you to join us on this journey at our Get Involved page.
WHY?
Young girls need spaces to discover and cultivate their innate leadership power - they enter elementary school with confidence and tenacity and as they start to approach adolescence and middle school, their confidence goes down, they succumb to more societal norms, and their voices get quieter - even silent.
We believe that — in order to own their individual and collective power and thrive in middle school and beyond — girls need to be self-aware, build empathy, be critically conscious, and engage collaboratively.
OUR JOURNEY
Fall 2018
Through a fellowship called Moonshot edVentures, we conducted empathy interviews with girls to surface their wants and needs and then began designing experiences to meet their desires.
Spring 2019
We held three pilots over the course of three months with 3rd-6th grade girls. They discovered their own leadership qualities, learned about women leaders and identified problems they wanted to solve. Our biggest learnings were that girls desired the all-girl space and enjoyed collaborating with each other.
Summer 2019
We held focus groups with the girls and families who participated in their pilots to dig deeper into their values and desired outcomes for girls programming. We obtained insights about self-awareness/identity, relationships, and the transitions girls experience that helped inform our program design.
Fall 2019
We launched the first official Girls Leadership Collaborative cohort with 16 girls meeting on Saturdays for seven weeks to explore the topics of self-awareness, identity, mindfulness, and self-compassion.
Summer 2020
We shifted our programming to the digital space and hosted virtual workshops where girls engaged in projects related to baking, science, and the arts!
Spring 2022
We reconnected in-person and offered workshops to a cohort of 13 middle school girls over the course of four months. Nine out of the thirteen girls were returners from our fall 2019 cohort. We explored topics such as body image, stress management, leveraging our strengths, understanding our comfort zones, and more. Our programming culminated in a overnight, weekend retreat at the YMCA of the Rockies where we strengthened our bonds and celebrated ourselves and each other!
Spring/Fall 2023
We kicked off another cohort of 15 middle and high school girls in March 2023. We had 11 girls who returned from other cohorts and added 4 new! We met monthly for workshops from March - October. The girls engaged in topics such as healthy relationships, self-care, boundaries, goal setting, transitioning to high school, and social media. They also invited an adult care-giver to join us for a yoga class and a self-defense class to further our practices of mindfulness and owning our voice and power. We culminated our 2023 cohort with a weekend retreat in Steamboat Springs where they got to take time to unplug, build deeper connections with each other, and engage in fun activities like bowling, swimming in the hot spring, hiking and ice-skating!