The Lower Eastside Girls Club

As a community-based organization they work to overcome the fragmentation of youth services through partnerships with non-profit organizations that share our mission, with local businesses, academic institutions, faith-based communities, and with their members’ families. By creating a ‘whole-girl’ approach – emphasizing a broad range of cultural competencies needed for success – we use more than academic performance to benchmark our impact. COVID-19 and its effects are putting the health, well-being and safety of their members at risk — many who have lost their safe spaces. In response to COVID-19, they are providing short-term cash infusions for non-food necessities, sourcing produce from local organic farms, and distributing food and takeout meals for families of 4+, sending books, art supplies, computers and sewing machines to members, daily check-ins from staff, assessing the needs of each family, providing online mentoring and tutoring, running a ‘virtual’ online Girls Club to enable our staff to continue to teach classes and provide safe social spaces for our members.