Strong GIRL event empowers girls with career exploration
With her eyes set on the podium at the front of the room, 10-year-old Addison Northcott did what any good president would do. She found herself a vice president. “I’m recruiting you,” she told 9-yearold Annabelle Lorenz, grabbing her hand to pull her along.
Annabelle reluctantly, eventually, followed, and the two Collierville girls stood smiling and proud behind the makeshift brown and blue podium. Adorned on the front, written in chalk, were the words “Madam President.”
Also like any good pair of running mates, they had a platform. It was, in a word, broad. Annabelle wanted to end world hunger. Addison wanted to make animals talk.
That was the beauty of the exercise. Whatever they wanted to do, they could do. Whatever they wanted to be, they could be.
The role playing was part of the first Strong G.I.R.L. Fest at Hutchison School on Oct. 13, a partnership between the school and Girl Scouts Heart of the South. The “GIRL” abbreviation stood for go-getter, innovator, risk-taker and leader.
Hundreds of girls and their families had the chance to explore opportunities and careers, many of them traditionally in male-dominated industries.
They learned to farm in an urban environment, practiced delivering news behind a camera and met firefighters and engineers.
“We want to be sure that we are consistently giving girls the message that they can do anything, be anything, and we will stand beside them,” Hutchison Head- master Kristen Ring said.
The all-girls school of about 800 students ages 2 to 18 often exposes students to such opportunities, Ring said, including extensive internships and job shadowing programs.
Oct. 13’s event was open to anyone,
and drew Girl Scout troops and families from across the region.
“We really wanted Memphis to know that we stand behind building strong girls,” Ring said.
In one classroom, girls worked with female engineers on a project to build a bridge out of Popsicle sticks.
Their bridge had to allow a boat to cross underneath it, and had to withstand weight.
“We’re just using our imaginations,” said 11-year-old Emma Robicheaux of Desoto County.
She used three sticks of glue in her hot glue gun to create her bridge, which held 11 pounds of weight — one for each year of their age — with ease.
She liked the opportunity to be creative, but she’s not sure engineering is in her future. Emma aspires to be a meteorologist.
“I like the weather,” she said. “I’ve been tracking the hurricane.”
Tiffany Heard, a civil engineer with Smith, Seckman and Reid consulting firm, said when she graduated from engineering school, she was one of two women in her class.
“I think the more women get into it, the more girls can see themselves doing it,” Heard said. She said she’s also a mother of three and wanted girls to see they can work and have a family.
Allyse Holcomb, a junior kindergarten teacher at the school who ran the Madam President portion of the event, had each girl write down and then, if they wished, say at the podium the traits that made them strong.
Often, she said, they think of strength in a physical way. On Oct. 13, they listed traits about themselves like kindness that also make them strong.
Their ideas for improving the world included helping the homeless, ending gun violence and giving everyone a puppy — “because everyone needs a friend.”
“What they have to say is important,” Heard said. “Their ideas are important.”