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Girls Together As One: Local Teens Start Youth Empowerment Program for Girls


Growing up, Nadia Green and Savannah Manns both experienced the catty and toxic ways young girls can treat each other. Now, as high school juniors, they decided to do something about it, creating Girls Together As One, a youth empowerment program for young girls in middle and elementary schools.

   “We wanted to show young women we can uplift each other, we can compliment each other,” Manns said. “We can be nice to each other, not have to compete with each other.”

   Every Wednesday, the two dedicate their free period to helping others. They go to Philadelphia elementary and middle schools to talk to groups of girls about topics such as body image issues, bullying and what makes a good friend.

  “It’s something that’s really, really crucial for young women, considering growing up in certain environments, it can be kind of catty,” Manns said.

   Green,16, and Manns, 15, visit each school for three to four consecutive weeks. They provide lessons, screen videos and act out scenarios to show how to properly handle difficult situations. Green and Manns also have discussions with the girls to talk about their own experience or to give out advice. The two even go as far as to give the girls in attendance their personal contact information so that they can reach out if they have any problems or need any help in the future.

Savannah Manns (left) and Nadia Green (right)./Rachel Wisniewski

Savannah Manns (left) and Nadia Green (right)./Rachel Wisniewski

   “I wouldn’t want someone to go through what I went through, but to be able to be that person to talk them through it or give them advice about the situation, it feels good that they have a support system on their side,” Green said.

   The program officially started on November 9th, 2016. When the two met in their freshman year of high school, they both discussed starting a group to help younger girls. In junior year, they decided to go ahead and run with their dream.

   “I really wanted to help people and be that person they could ask for anything,” Green said, noticing there were not a lot of programs for empowering girls. “So why not start a group like that?”

   The two both understood the importance of positive conversation for young women and trying to stop bullying as Green and Manns said they had both dealt with bullying growing up.

   “I used to get picked on for my skin color, I used to get picked on for my last name, I used to get picked on for the color of my gums,” Manns said. Now, she said, she does not see the point of letting it bother her.

   Manns said she saw issues of colorism within her community, in which darker-skinned African American women are taught to felt less attractive than lighter-skinned women.

   “I think that’s one thing that really stuck with me,” Manns said. “Why does it have to be one of those really big issues? Why can’t we all be beautiful black girls?”

   Green and Manns also saw how necessary strong female role models can be for younger girls. Green’s mother is her role model, she said.

   “She’s a single parent. She has two kids and I’ve seen the sacrifices she’s made for us and the struggles,” Nadia said, “so that we can have clothes on our back and a roof over our head.”

   For Manns, whose mother passed away when she was only eight, her grandmother filled the maternal role. Her father also put her in the Uniquely You Summit, a yearly summit targeted at helping black girls define and discover themselves. Manns, who is currently a UYS Cover Girl, said the program gave her African American women to look up to. The program also inspired her in wanting to help others.

   “It’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘wow, I want to do something like that,’” Manns said of Uniquely You.

   Now on their second school, Manns and Green wanted to instill leadership lessons into their program. To do so, they decided to have the students set up a food drive. The young girls will be in charge of making signs and raising awareness about the food drive. The food will go to Philabundance, a non-profit food bank that serves Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley region.

   After the food drive and the program is complete, Green and Manns are organizing a breakfast to have the girls to meet with female police officers. Green and Manns hope it will bring unity between police officers and a younger generation, especially during an era when police brutality has been a controversial topic.

   “Unification has to start somewhere and because other people are not extending the olive branch, we decided to take it in our own hands,” Manns and Green had said over an email interview about the police breakfast.

   Currently, Manns and Green are trying to raise money for the police breakfast, relying primarily on crowd-funding through a GoFundMe Page. This will help cover transportation and catering costs.

   Green and Manns both run the program on their own. Green said she spends several hours a day on the program, planning and emailing for future schools, while Manns said she does more of the interpersonal tasks. They both are planning a commercial, which they hope will be aired on NBC10.

   While they are busy with the program, they also lead regular high school lives. Green loves watching horror movies and listening to music, with her eclectic tastes ranging from metalcore to gospel music. She hopes to go to college and pursue a career in financial analysis in New York.  Manns plays soccer and is active in Youthadelphia, a youth philanthropy program. She said she enjoys her physics class because she likes learning about different perspectives and forces in nature.

   Manns and Green said they hope to expand their program and continue to run it, even as they go to college.

   “You might not see it immediately, but you’ll see it eventually in the way that the young women carry themselves or the way that they’ll want to teach other young women,” Manns said, “That’s kind of our goal as well, to have a domino effect.”

   To get involved with Girls Together As One, they can be reached by email at gtaophilly@gmail.com. Their GoFundMe page can be found here. •

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