Empowerment in Action: Girl Up Programming at FORA

By: Mia Thompson

FORA’s dedication to providing equitable access to education does not stop at High Impact tutoring. Students at FORA have the opportunity to further enrich their learning with extracurriculars promoting teamwork, leadership, advocacy, and creativity. 

One such program is FORA’s chapter of Girl Up, a global group founded by the United Nations Foundation in 2010.

According to the Girl Up website, “Girl Up is a girl-centered leadership development initiative, focusing on equity for girls and women in spaces where they are unheard or underrepresented.”

Girl Up has come a long way in the past fifteen years, reaching communities across the world.

Today, they “operate a global network of regional affiliates impacting 345,000 girls and youth leaders in 155 countries and all 50 U.S. states, developing transformative leaders who advance gender justice worldwide.”  

At FORA Girl Up meets weekly, empowering girls ages 12 to 16 to take control of their education and make their voices heard in environments where they are often quieted. 

Community building and self-advocacy are the focus of FORA’s Girl Up chapter, which is spearheaded by Syeda Siddiqua, a Deputy Head of FORA’s Family School Partnership program. 

“What we do every week is something that helps to empower these girls,” Siddiqua explained. “So either leadership or learning about how to be respectful to each other and respectful to other people.”

Every Wednesday evening, girls enrolled at FORA meet to engage in a variety of team-building, educational, and leadership activities. One week, women’s rights lawyer, Lisa Banks, came in to speak with the group about their future goals. In a different Girl Up meeting, students conducted interviews with one another and practiced public speaking. Sometimes, a meeting is just an opportunity for the girls to play games and get to know each other outside of their day-to-day tutoring. 

Girl Up also sees FORA students working on long-term projects to develop communication skills and confidence. 

“What we’re working on currently is an arts and crafts type of fair,” Siddiqua said. “[Throughout this month] the girls are going to be learning a craft or a skill that they don’t know already … and then they’re going to be teaching [that craft] to other people. We’re planning on having an event and we are going to have the girls teach everyone that comes.”

FORA’s first Girl Up event was a cultural fair where girls prepared tri-fold presentations sharing their personal culture. The women in the FORA community rallied around this fair, bringing a variety of different dishes representative of their own heritage to share with the group and the event attendees.

Girl Up’s mission aims to address educational and workplace discrimination women face, regardless of their background. 

According to The World Bank Group, “girls’ education goes beyond getting girls into school. It is also about ensuring that girls learn and feel safe while in school; have the opportunity to complete all levels of education, acquiring the knowledge and skills to compete in the labor market; gain socio-emotional and life skills necessary to navigate and adapt to a changing world; make decisions about their own lives; and contribute to their communities and the world.”

FORA’s Girl Up program seeks to foster self-confidence, positivity, and community among the refugee girls it serves, many of whom are Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE). 

“I’ve seen girls really blossom from this,” Siddiqua said. “I’ve seen them be more vocal outside of Girl Up. [They are] talking to me more, talking to other people more … More confidence and taking initiative to interact with others.”

“I am able to find ways to improve my role model skill and [become] a better person,” one student who participates in Girl Up at FORA shared when asked about her favorite part of the program. “Also, being in Girl Up makes me happy, so bonus points.”

Read more about Girl Up’s mission on their website, and find out more about FORA’s Girl Up programming here. Help support FORA’s mission to help a child flourish on their education journey and get involved today.