Our Approach

Mission

Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) works intergenerationally, through a Black feminist lens, to achieve gender and racial justice by centering the leadership of Black girls and gender-expansive young people of color to reshape culture and policy through advocacy, youth-led programming, and shifting dominant narratives.

Vision

We are co-creating a world where Black girls and gender-expansive young people of color have opportunities to lead in the design of policies in their schools and in government to withstand and dismantle structural barriers that prevent them from succeeding and thriving on their own terms. We bring to life our values by affirming and investing in the leadership of communities who have long been sidelined by public policy in order to maintain oppressive structures. We do this work because we know young people will lead us to a radically different world where we all experience freedom, safety, and joy in our lives.

How We See Change

GGE Theory of Transformative Change

IF we center and uplift cis and trans Black girls and gender expansive youth through programs, campaigns, and initiatives grounded in

  • Black Feminism,
  • A strengths-based and intergenerational eco-systemic social work approach
  • Positive youth development model, and
  • Popular education

THEN an emerging critical mass of folks dedicated to gender and racial justice will lead an intergenerational movement to end structural, raced-gender based violence, exclusion, and discrimination

BECAUSE we believe supporting the positive, holistic, and critically conscious leadership development of young folks with a gender lens will help young folks use their expertise to spur transformative change for individuals, schools, communities, cities, and states, with national and global impact.

How We Make Change Happen

GGE_ImpactModel_Blocks

GGE enacts change through a combination of Policy Change, Youth-Led Programing and Culture Change work. We call this model a “three-legged stool,” the assumption being that all three legs are needed for the stool to stand.

GGE’s three-legged stool is upheld by  Strategic Investment that resources our work for the long-term,  Research reiterating the need for those directly impacted to be named with data evidence, and living our values by investing in our own  Organizational Culture.

OUR ISSUE AREAS

  • Young People Deserve to Live free from Gender-Based Violence
  • Ending Abuse at the Hands of Law Enforcement
  • Young People Should Experience Education Justice
  • Girls and Non-Binary Youth of Color deserve to be invested in and cared for so they have Access to Safe, Fulfilling Lives

What We Believe

  • We believe that young folks are experts who will organize and lead an intergenerational movement for gender equity rooted in Black feminism. 
  • We believe in the power of a Black feminist storytelling tradition to break the silence on structural violence and state violence at the various intersections of racism and heteropatriarchy. 
  • We believe in the words of Audre Lorde that “difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged” and that “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own”. 
  • We believe in the powerful uses of anger for young people as they respond to injustice and inequity. 
  • We believe cultivating and investing in Joy is necessary for our liberatory movement work. 
  • We believe in the interconnectedness of struggles for liberation for women and femmes of color, queer folks, undocumented peoples, Indigenous peoples, differently abled folks, folks fighting imperialism and capitalism, and various marginalized groups in the U.S. and around the globe.
  • We recognize that our Black feminist politics are grounded in our practices, both our everyday lived experiences and our grassroots organizing and advocacy as and with cis and trans girls, young women, and gender nonconforming youth and adults of color. 
  • We love and appreciate the many girls of color and TGNC youth in GGE over the years who have taught us more than we could imagine.  
  • We affirm various articulations of Black feminism and other women of color feminisms. 

We ultimately believe liberation is possible.