awards

Girls For A Change began as an idea in Santa Clara County, CA in 2000 with a group of energized volunteers, one staff member, $100,000 and 10 Girl Action Teams. As of 2008, we have a staff of 13, three national sites, a $1 million budget and over 100 Girl Action Teams. Our accomplishments include:

First Annual Girl Summit
The Girls For A Change October 2002 Girl Summit in was one of the most powerful events of our time. The 1,100 young women and 500 adult women present made a powerful statement about the possibility of what girls and women can create.

The Opening Ceremonies were led by Girls For a Change Girl Steering Committee hosts Jennifer Ha and Denisse Herrera. Keynote speaker Bertice Berry, PhD delivered a moving address followed by a Soul Force performance about girls finding their voice. Girls then attended 3 workshops each, selected from over 30 available sessions. Workshop sessions included: Using Poetry to Speak Back, Dating Violence & Self-Defense, Spiritual Activism, Fundraising for Social Justice, Fat and Body Advocacy, and a Teen Mom panel. At the end of the day, girls and coaches gathered in neighborhood-based teams for the first time to discuss what they learned and talk about possibilities for their social change project. GFC held four more Girl Summits in Silicon Valley reaching more than 6,500 girls before taking the Summits on the road in 2008.

Silicon Valley Expansion
Girls For A Change expanded its work beyond Santa Clara County for the 2004 Girl Summit, establishing Girl Action Teams in Oakland, Santa Cruz and East Palo Alto.

National Expansion
Girls For A Change was awarded a three-year $300,000 replication grant by the Draper Richards Foundation in July 2003. The grant supported expanding program activities and launching national replication through July 2005. GFC launched its first programming outside of Silicon Valley with a new site in Phoenix, Arizona in spring 2006. In the fall of 2006, the Phoenix site already had more than 20 Girl Action Teams.

In 2008, GFC launched its National Tour bringing Change Your World Trainings to more than 2,500 girls throughout the country. The tour also included the launch of Girl Action Teams across the country, including expansion in Richmond, VA. GFC also started its online GFC Action Network to connect social change makers throughout the country.

GFC was recently awarded $700,000 in growth capital from New Profit Inc., a national venture philanthropy fund. Since 1998, New Profit has worked to help social entrepreneurs meet the challenge of building their organizations to scale their social impact.  Through its venture philanthropy fund, New Profit provides multi-year financial and strategic support from individual investors and its signature partner, Monitor Group, to extraordinary social sector leaders whose organizations have the potential to create broad-scale change in the United States. 

NPR's etown award
Whitney Smith, GFC Founder and Co-CEO, was awarded an e-chievement award by the NPR show, etown, for her role in founding GFC. The show recognizes "people around the country who've found positive solutions to challenges in their communities." You go Whitney! The show aired the week of 8/22/06.
 
GFC Goes to Harvard
GFC Co-CEOs Whitney and Niko were given an amazing opportunity this summer to attend the Harvard Business School's Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management with a generous scholarship from the Bay Area Harvard MBA Alumni group. The program welcomed 100 non-profit leaders from around the world to work with the HBS faculty to examine their missions and rethink our approaches for  implementation and replication.

"The HBS professors were truly the finest 'teachers' we have ever experienced," Niko says. "We challenged our own mission, vision, evaluation, and strategy. We pushed our own thought process further then we have ever had the time or support to before. The outcome? Of course, the learning is integrated into our daily actions but we actually flew an Executive Director candidate out to our dorms in Harvard after a particularly stimulating session on attitude versus aptitude and have since brought her on as our shining new star in Phoenix! We imagine the impact to continue to reveal itself and in the meantime, we will miss dorm life and all-nighters."