Spotlight On
February 14, 2008
Organization Name: Girls Quest
Year Founded: 1935
Contact Person: Susan Hall, Executive Director
Address: 150 West 30th Street, Suite 901, New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 532-7050
Fax: (212) 532-7061
Email: info@girlsquest.org
Web site Address: http://www.girlsquest.org
Mission:
Girls Quest, a 70-year-old youth development organization for girls ages 8-17, offers outdoor experiential education, literacy development, year-round mentoring, leadership training, and peer-to-peer role modeling. The mission of Girls Quest is to nurture girls from low-income families in New York to help them achieve their full potential and become active members of their communities by building academic and social competence.
History:
In 1935 Mrs. Ruth Kauth, a social worker at the Henry Street Settlement, started the Girls’ Vacation Fund, now Girls Quest, as a means of providing recreation and health programs for the sisters of boys attending her agency’s summer programs. Since that time, Girls Quest has served over 60,000 economically disadvantaged girls from New York City.
From its beginnings, Girls Quest has focused its programs on the summer and has achieved great success with its Summer Experiential Education and Development Program (SEED). The organization's experience with newer, smaller, year-round programs has shown that it can achieve great results during the school year as well by increasing the frequency of work with girls during out-of-school time. All participants in the programs have attended SEED, and all programming intentionally builds on SEED’s success in an interconnected continuum of engagement.
During 2007, Girls Quest served a total of some 350 girls in a multi-year, year-round continuum of programming. These girls came from all 5 boroughs of New York, with some 73% living at or below the Federal poverty standard, and another 11% very low income, for a total of 84% living in or at risk of poverty. Based on annual surveys and interviews, most of the girls served face the challenges of urban poverty on a daily basis, including minimal access to health care, poor nutrition, lack of economic opportunity for their families, and insufficient social services. Beyond statistics, most live in communities where living standards and everyday experiences do not help them to thrive and grow.
Current Programs: The Summer Experiential Education and Development Program (SEED) is the point of entry for all girls who join Girls Quest and operates at the Camp Oh-Neh-Tah program site in East Windham, NY, in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. SEED is a fusion of a traditional summer camp experience and a literacy-focused educational program. The goal-oriented SEED program helps to lessen summer learning loss by providing activities that stimulate girls' learning and emotional development in an environment that is safe, fun, and nurturing while challenging girls to strive to their best potentials. The program provides the 300+ girls served with opportunities they could never hope to receive during a summer spent at home.
Mentor Program: Matches local professional women for one year with girls ages 12-17 who have completed at least one recent summer of SEED. Mentors offer year-round guidance, support, and friendship through weekly communication and twice-monthly outings in New York City.
Teen Leadership Program: Qualified girls ages 15 and up who have attended SEED at least twice participate in a series of cultural, educational, and leadership activities throughout the year. They receive training in counseling, leadership, conflict resolution, and behavior modeling during the academic year, in preparation for serving all summer, for three years, as peer leaders at SEED.
Advancing Year-Round Engagement Program (AYRE): A new program initiative piloted in 2006/07, AYRE has been designed to offer new program components during the school year, including workshops, cultural/outdoor experiences, and community volunteer projects.
Girls Quest focuses solely on at-risk urban girls and the special needs they have for reaching their potential, especially those in under-resourced communities and disadvantaged families. Other special aspects of programming include:
- Four core experiential education principles in all programming: literacy/ communication skills, creative expression, ecological awareness, leadership skills.
- An engaging developmental continuum, which has led SEED to attract a 50-60% rate of re-enrollment each summer.
- Increasing interconnections exist among all of the programs—the Summer Experiential Education and Development Program (SEED), Mentor Program, and Teen Leadership Program.
Funding Needs:
Girls Quest is seeking general operating support, as well as funding to maintain and expand its outdoor experiential education, year-round mentoring, and leadership training programs. In addition to in-kind donations of goods and products, Girls Quest is also seeking partnerships with corporations and other entities that seek to combine funding with employee volunteerism.
Learn more.
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