GirlSource launched in 1998 as a nonprofit organization to address the lack of meaningful work and leadership opportunities for low-income young women. Through our paid programs, young women gain life, leadership and job skills while creating media projects that increase awareness of young women's issues. GirlSource works with low-income young women ages 14 to 18, with a focus on young women of color, immigrant young women, and young mothers.
Since 1998, GirlSource has created innovative programming for low-income young women that combines job, leadership and life skills with young women's own health and well-being issues. We have taken the time and risks needed to engage and involve young women so they feel a compelling investment and interest in their own work and acquisition of new skills while employed in our programs. All of our programs are organized as job experiences that require a commitment to four-day /week participation over a number of weeks. GirlSource values young women's participation and contribution to our programs and demonstrates this by paying young women for their time.
Based on focus groups and hundreds of surveys GirlSource distributed around the Bay Area and other major cities, we learned of young women's interest in having a health and life guide created by and for young women that would address the wide range of health and well-being issues they identified as most important in their lives. In response to this, we launched an employment and skill-building program in the fall of 1999 and hired ten young women from diverse backgrounds and neighborhoods that were trained as editors, researchers, writers, photographers, interviewers, art directors, and advocates for their own issues. This team worked hard over a nine-month period researching, interviewing, editing and designing their own book. It's About Time! a book by and for young women about our relationships, rights, futures, bodies, minds, and souls was published in October, 2000, and is currently available in local bookstores throughout the Bay Area and through amazon.com
Both this program and the book have been the subject of critical acclaim for creating original holistic programming that empowers young women while providing education around health and leadership.