Welcome to the 2024-2025 GirlsUP Teen Advisory Board!

For those new to the Teen Board, we often get asked, so what does the GirlsUP Teen Board actually do? Here’s our response

Our GirlsUP Teen Advisory Board is a chance for your daughter to continue her GirlsUP journey throughout the remainder of her middle school and high school years. It’s our way of extending the gift of GirlsUP to her during these formative years and inspiring her to continue to think creatively, communicate effectively, assess choices critically and develop and maintain an authentic self-reliance. Through our Teen Board monthly activities, your daughter will be encouraged to know her own mind and to speak it; question the often-uninspiring messages about girls from society and her peers; think beyond herself; and continue to reveal her true character through choices, big and small.

We do this through regular Teen Board meetings (from October through June), discussions, and opportunities that will challenge your daughter to think, to grow, and to lead, including running monthly Teen Board meetings, exploring relevant local and global issues that affect girls, planning ongoing year-round service and team-building events, being mentors to our younger GirlsUP Girls, and acting as spokespersons to the media. GirlsUP Teen Board Advisors also work at our GirlsUP summer program sessions. Throughout this year, we will have approximately nine monthly meetings and at least three service projects and/or team-building activities all of which will be fully planned and orchestrated by our Teen Board Advisors. There will be pizza and dessert served at each of our monthly meetings. The annual fee to participate in the GirlsUP Teen Advisory Board is $200.00 which can be paid through the link on our website or by bringing a check to our first meeting.

Serving on our GirlsUP Teen Advisory Board also makes your daughter eligible for incredible formative opportunities through our partnerships. For example, girls on our Senior Teen Board are eligible for selection to the United Nations Teen Board where she can meet and work with other girls from around the country to empower girls around the world. We are proud to report that since 2011, seventeen of our GirlsUP Teen Advisors have been privileged to be selected for this prestigious honor which the United Nations bestows on only some twenty girls worldwide each year. Their work with the United Nations has included delivering a petition to the White House to end child marriage, meeting the heroic Malala Yousafzai; and traveling along with their fellow UN Teen Board Members to cities all around the country to help orchestrate UN events to raise awareness that will help improve the lives of their sisters in some of the world’s most disadvantaged communities. In short, this experience for our GirlsUP Girls has been profound, and we are proud that our GirlsUP Girls who have had this opportunity with the UN have gone on to substantial accomplishments at colleges across the country, such as Columbia University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania and as a Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC/Chapel Hill. These GirlsUP Girls credit, in large part, their experiences on our Teen Board and with the United Nations as key to fueling their accomplishments.

In addition, through our partnership with The New York Times, girls who serve on our GirlsUP Senior Teen Board are eligible for selection to attend summer programs at The School of the New York Times, Vogue Summer Academy and Sotheby’s Summer Institution.

Our Teen Board is a unique opportunity, as GirlsUP is singular in its commitment to creating an organization that is truly “of the girls, by the girls, and for the girls.” We place genuine trust in our Teen Advisors and, correspondingly, expect matureaccountability from them.

We hope your girls will join the GirlsUP Teen Advisory Board. Please let us know if you have any questions at [email protected].

Sincerely,

The GirlsUP Teen Board Team