Girls Leading Girls supports Black Lives Matter
Dear Families, Coaches, Players, Supporters,
We stand in solidarity with the millions of people who are angry and grieving, especially for all of those who have lost their lives to police violence.
To our Black sisters & families – we see you, we hear you, we support you. You matter. Your lives matter.
The fight for Black women and girls in particular, is often overlooked during times of violence. We want to uplift the names of women that have suffered: Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Tanisha Anderson, Rekia Boyd, Korryn Gaines, Aiyana Jones, and too many more.
We each have a role to play in not just calling for change, but in leading by doing.
Sports and youth programming play an important role in helping to dismantle systemic racism and violence:
we teach empathetic leadership
we teach social justice
we teach inclusion, belonging and community
Girls Leading Girls is for all girls and women.
We know we have a lot of work to do both internally and externally. We are by no means perfect and are always working to educate ourselves and do more for others.
We are committed to taking action starting with these four steps for the month of June:
Work with experts. We hired Dr. Nika White Consulting, a diversity, equity and inclusion consultancy, to ensure our plan is actionable and needed.
Get more BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) girls playing. We’re building an action plan to make sure BIPOC girls feel included in our programs, safe, seen, valued and empowered.
Lead by example. Cultivating staff and coaches from BIPOC backgrounds is critical to making our programs accessible and inclusive through our recruiting and training. Currently, 57% of our staff are women of color, 53% of our coaches are women of color, 50% of our boards are people of color, 55% of the girls we serve are girls of color. But we can do more, and we can do better.
Share BIPOC women’s voices. To break the cycle of prejudice, we need to engage in meaningful dialogues that amplify the experience of girls and women of color, in order to promote lasting learning and erase bias.
We must each do our part individually and collectively to end systemic racism and violence. Join us in being active allies to the Black community. Read, listen, watch works by black women. Speak out to your community and representatives. Support local black women owned businesses!
We know that our work doesn't end here, and we invite our community members to reach out to us to help us identify more ways we can improve ourselves, our industry and our community. Now is the time to create change, and it starts within ourselves.
This is the first of many conversations and actions that we are committed to at Girls Leading Girls. We will be developing a more thorough plan that integrates anti-racism within all levels of our organization, programming, and community setting tangible goals for now and the years to come.
Yours in community,
Bre Russell
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Brianna Russell
Founding Executive Director
Girls Leading Girls
A 501c3 nonprofit training girls in leadership through soccer.
Pronouns: she/her/hers
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Tax ID #46-4563540
We use the term “Girls” which refers to gender expansive youth (cis girls, trans girls, nonbinary youth, gender non-conforming youth, gender queer youth and any girl-identified youth).