Screenshot Courtesy of girlslearn.net
Northwood’s GLI Chapter is one of only five chapters in North Carolina.
Three sophomores are aiming to help all Northwood students join an international movement to improve girls’ rights for education, empowerment and equality. Katie Fuller, Meera Butalia and Madison James initiated a Girls Learn International (GLI) chapter at Northwood, officially beginning Jan. 1.
GLI is a branch of the Feminist Majority Foundation, founded in 2003 by Lisa Alter and her daughters Arielle and Jordana. There are over 114 chapters in the U.S., now including Northwood.
“We started Girls Learn International because we wanted to implement women’s rights ideas at Northwood…. We also didn’t like the idea that people thought feminists were a bad thing,” Fuller said. “We didn’t think [students] understood what we’re trying to do, and there are a lot of girls at our school who are wondering why we didn’t already have something like this.”
GLI club meetings take place every Friday after school in the dance room. Plus 1 meetings will start up soon as well. Anyone can join GLI, boys included.
“It is definitely not a ‘girls hate boys’ club; it is totally all inclusive,” GLI advisor Leah Wilhelm said. “We would love to have boys come, because it opens their eyes as much as it opens our eyes to the issues of women.”
Fuller was driven to start Northwood’s GLI chapter after hearing from a friend about the success of Woods Charter’s chapter.
“They have a chapter at Woods [Charter], and it was very successful,” Wilhelm said. “[Fuller] really liked the mission of it, and her friend talked very highly about it, so I think that inspired her to look more into it. She was talking to her friends, and they thought there was a real need at Northwood for girls to have a place to go to voice their opinion on issues that they think affect them.”
As an officially initiated chapter, the GLI club will get started by completing lessons or activities regarding issues such as reproductive rights, gender equality and consent.
“When you sign up for Girls Learn International, you get a bunch of activities and lessons that you can do, so we’ve been working on those,” Fuller said. “Second semester you’re supposed to focus more on doing different projects and fundraisers.”
These activities and lessons can be done inside or even outside of school, such as attending City Council meetings or State Board of Education meetings to voice student opinions.
“The main goal of the club right now is outreach and service projects, so they have a couple lined up already that have to get approved,” Wilhelm said. “During the meetings we will work to get them going, but I think it’s more service related. We have been talking about issues, but I think service projects are the way to go.”
Butalia and James hope to start in-school projects, such as implementing “Menstruation Stations” in the bathrooms.
“We were going to try and get pad and tampon donation boxes in the bathrooms, and then hopefully have that available for anyone who needed one, because they’re so expensive,” Butalia said. “Also, with the boxes, we could have facts about the luxury taxes on tampons, even though they’re not really a luxury.”
Another planned project will be informing more students about consent and rape culture in schools, possibly through information sessions or as a health topic.
The GLI club hopes to make an impact within the school community as well as internationally. One of the group’s future plans is to partner with a school in a third world country and send supplies and resources to help girls receive educations.
“I think they definitely would like to see it reach outside of Northwood,” Wilhelm said. “If we tag team up with the group at Woods, since they’ve had such a successful run of this, and we can just feed off of them, maybe we could do something that really will take it beyond Pittsboro [and] beyond North Carolina. I think it will become bigger than just Northwood.”
– By Leah Kallam
