GIRLS LIKE US
EMPOWERMENT GROUP
EMBRACE - ENLIGHTEN - EMPOWER
Girls Like Us is an empowerment group for young women dedicated to the betterment, enrichment, and empowerment of Brown & Black Girls. This program is based out of West End Neighborhood House that teaches girls between the age of 8-15 everything from safety to interpersonal skills. While they’re all a little different, the common thread is that they all create a sense of community for the young women involved. We provide a safe space for the girls to communicate with each other to talk about their feelings, school, self-care, and more. The goal is to educate and empower girls who come from underserved communities while giving them the tools and confidence they need to advocate for themselves.
Community Partners
Bayard Middle School
Delaware Nature Society
Pulaski Elementary School
Serviam Girls Academy
The Terry Center
West End Neighborhood House
WHAT WE DO
Changing the narrative while advancing Black Girls by providing experience, education, and opportunity to uplift and advocate for themselves.
WHO WE SERVE
Girls Like Us (G.L.U) is committed to helping girls from underserved communities who have fallen victim to adultification. Coming from homes of absent parents, substance abuse and /or incarceration. G.L.U engages in weekly sessions that focus on self-love, self-care, empowerment, development, and prevention. Additional programming includes “Lunch and Learn” field trips, Black Girls Empowered Week, and Young Women’s Leadership Summit.
HOW WE SERVE
Girls Like Us (G.L.U) creates a trauma-responsive environment that advances social and emotional learning while healing our Black Girls with evidence based learning programs designed to promote life skills, character values, and resistance skills to negative peer influence.
Mentorship - Enrichment - Healing Space- Healing through Art
We introduce the ideology of intersectionality and adultication as we continue to deepen the understanding that Black Girls have multiple identities and how to embrace them. We pair them with mentors who come from similar backgrounds to help them understand that it's not where you come from but where you can go. We do this by advocating for change and increasing access to resources for Black Girls to not only survive Blackgirlhood but to thrive in it!
CHILDHOOD ADULTIFICATION
Let Our Girls Be Girls
Adultification involves children being exposed to adult knowledge and engaging in behaviors understood as adult-like (such as taking on caregiving or provider roles in the family). The child transitions to adult-like personas/family roles, typically driven by a necessary dependence on them to meet family daily survival needs and limited housing options. This is often with limited guidance and is correlated with high poverty rates.
Based on ethnographic research with low-income families, Burton theorizes 4 stages of childhood adultification:
1) Precocious knowledge: witnessing situations and acquiring knowledge that is advanced for the child’s age; often become aware of financial situations and may share with other children or act on/emulate adult behaviors.
2) Mentored adultification: when a child assumes an adult role with limited supervision from an adult. Often allows the child to feel needed, appreciated, while mostly maintaining the parent-child authority hierarchy.
3) Peerification/spousification: when a child behaves more like a parent’s peer or spouse than like a parent’s subordinate (takes on the role of quasi wife, husband, or confidante). Peerification will become spousification when the child begins co-parenting or becoming a confidante.
4) Parentification: when a child assumes a full-time quasi-parent role to their siblings and parents. The most extreme cases are usually when parents are substance abusers, and the child must protect or take care of them as well as their siblings.
Why does childhood adultification happen to certain children in certain families?
Birth order and gender: eldest male often breadwinner, eldest female often homemakers/caretakers
Perceived early maturity and resilience
Specific family needs must be met: sibling care, elder care, jobs, financial management, emotional confidants, communication
Reduced parental family resources: inadequate quality time, unavailability, lack of psychological awareness, poor health
Reduced social family resources: lack of emotional and material resources from relationships and social networks
Strain on parents that pressure children to comfort their parents, help them
OUR WHY
While reaching new heights, statistics show that Black Women suffer more than any other race and gender with health disparities, lack of access to education, and political representation at a disproportionate rate - both nationally and globally.
Black Girls and other Girls of Color are often subjectively punished and criminalized for their communication styles, their expressions, and the trauma they have experienced. It is imperative as policy leaders to advocate for the necessary resources, laws, policies, and practices that create supportive learning environments, where all students have the opportunity to succeed; and where Black Girls –who have for too long been subjected to racist, sexist, and discriminatory practices — have access to a robust array of targeted services and supports able to propel them to a lifetime of success.
BLACK GIRLS IN SCHOOLS ARE:
6x more likely than their white girls to be suspended.
3x more likely to be restrained than white female students.
4x more likely to be arrested than white females.
3x more likely to be referred to law enforcement than white females.
*SOURCE: Discipline Data for Girls in US Public Schools,
WAYS TO HELP
Take Action Now
MAKE A DONATION
Show Your Support
Thank you for your support of Girls Like Us - G.L.U ! No contribution is too small. 100% of your contribution will go directly to our mission of changing the narrative while advancing Black Girls by providing experience, education, and opportunity to uplift and advocate for themselves. All donations are fully tax-deductible.
VOLUNTEER YOUR TIME
Make an Impact
This is one of the simplest ways to help our cause. We believe the best way for our initiatives to be successful is for the community to actively get involved. This is an easy and efficient way of contributing to the great work we do at Girls Like Us. Get in touch with any questions about how you can volunteer your time today.
Audre Lorde
“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives”
CONTACT GIRLS LIKE US
West End Neighborhood House, Inc.
710 N Lincoln St.
Wilmington, DE, 19805