Girls for Gender Equity

For over twenty years, Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) has been advancing the liberation of Black girls and gender-expansive youth of color through a Black feminist intergenerational lens. GGE creates the conditions for youth leadership to shape culture, policy, programming, and change narratives throughout Brooklyn and beyond.

“Brooklyn Org’s unwavering belief in us and continued support has allowed us to amplify youth voices and highlight the issues important to us, like gender-based violence, reproductive justice, and school climate,” Joanne N. Smith, the organization’s Executive Director, shared.

GGE works to reimagine community, school, and governmental policies to ensure that the voices of Black girls and gender-expansive young people are heard and their solutions enacted. One way GGE imagines this work is through The Young Women’s Initiative (YWI).

The Young Women’s Initiative seeks to invest in young women and girls in New York City over the long term, especially women from communities of color. YWI is a critical driver of policy change citywide. Through GGE’s efforts to change the culture and the narratives around Black girls and gender-expansive youth, GGE hosts their Sisters in Strength survivorship program, and advocates in Albany for the Solutions Not Suspensions Act and increased sex education in schools.

“Our young people are the ones who go out there and speak to the City Council about the policies that they want to see happen,” said Peggy-Anne Hucepy, GGE’s Director of Development.

Over the past year, YWI participants developed policy proposals around criminal justice, education, health, and more, which were then taken to higher-ups in the New York City government.

“It was really a full circle moment for them to see, ‘hey, I started this thing in October of last year,’ and to see all their hard work being celebrated at an address in February by the NYC Speaker,” added Hollisha Liverpool, GGE’s Director of Programs and Impact.

More recently, New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced the Council’s commitment to advance recommendations developed during the YWI 2.0 convening. GGE’s youth leaders will work with City Council members, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health to address school climate, mental health, nutrition, and reproductive access and education issues impacting young people in New York City.

The momentum from YWI 2.0 has continued to usher in monumental changes across GGE’s internal teams. After 5 years of advocacy from GGE’s policy team, NYC reformed uniform dress codes, inspired by youth participants and the Incorrigible Act in the NY State Legislature.

Girls for Gender Equity believes that dress codes that fail to consider the current cultural context can lead young people to feel singled out or marginalized through code enforcement – suspending their self-expression. Respect and dignity for students mean understanding their world, acknowledging what matters to them, and integrating their culture into the spaces they occupy, GGE’s team shared.

In this August 2024 piece from The New York Times, GGE youth participant Jasmina Salimova noted that when she felt freedom to play around with the way that she wore her hair and dressed, she found it liberating and transformative. Jasmina even felt compelled to learn more about the intersection of fashion, art, culture, and oppression after this experience. Furthermore, it led her to engage in activism work more broadly– starting with participating in protests for police reform and policy advocacy in NYC and Albany with GGE. Now Jasmina has the confidence to make big decisions about her future that she is sure and proud of. This whole experience revealed to her that when you limit self-expression, “you limit innovation.”

With over two decades of accomplishments, GGE’s impact now spans generations, with GGE alumni returning as staff members and additional alumni taking on leadership roles across the nonprofit and social change sectors with the tools they learned at GGE. The organization continues to advocate with and for youth, proving that the innovations of young people are limitless.