Where Girls of Color Do the Grantmaking

If we truly believe that those closest to the problem should lead in determining the solution, then girls, young women and gender-expansive youth need to have a voice in philanthropy. Tides Foundation’s Advancing Girls Fund supports nearly 150 nonprofits, most of which are in local communities serving and empowering adolescent girls, young women, and gender-expansive youth of color and their allies. We value and are inspired by the way our grantee partners center and elevate girls’ voices, and now, with the launch of the Advancing Girls Fund Youth Advisory Council, we’re asking the same of ourselves.

Introducing: The Advancing Girls Youth Advisory Council

To make an impact in girls’ lives and create spaces where they can learn, play, dream and emerge as powerful leaders, we need their leadership in shaping our grantmaking strategy. The goal of the Advancing Girls Fund Youth Advisory Council is to ensure youth voices and perspectives are elevated and central to the decision-making process of our participatory grantmaking efforts. It’s our goal and commitment that the Council will contribute significantly to expanding our investment in justice-oriented programs and initiatives that elevate girls and gender-expansive youth as leaders, visionaries, and changemakers.  

Supporting Girls’ Leadership Through Participatory Grantmaking

The Youth Advisory Council kicked off with a leadership retreat in New York City, the first of many opportunities for Youth Advisors to develop their leadership skills, deepen their knowledge of philanthropy and social justice and build lasting connections with like-minded individuals committed to driving change in their communities. During collaborative retreat sessions aimed at teasing out the collective’s core values and interests in social justice and youth empowerment, the Youth Advisors shared their views of various issues impacting girls and gender-expansive youth, including reproductive justice, gender-based violence and mental health. 

“Mental health is a core issue for the youth in the communities I serve,” Youth Advisor Samantha Cortez said, “because it is a result of the disruptive environments they have been placed in. Mental health challenges are not the result of who they are individually, but a result of bigger issues communities of color face.”

Youth Advisor Chimdindu Okafor shared that she joined the Youth Advisory Council because she is passionate about collaborative social justice and believes the council creates opportunities to “form community and to discuss big, complex ideas like power and youth agency in ways that lead to tangible change.”

A Grantmaking Strategy Guided by Those Closest to the Issues: Girls Themselves

Over the next year, the Youth Advisory Council will be instrumental in generating ideas for youth-led investments, developing new guidelines for participatory grantmaking, and making grant recommendations. Much of this work will be centered on pressing issues the Youth Advisors identify as essential to the well-being of girls and gender-expansive youth. 

It is our belief that this youth involvement is vital to the grantmaking process, ensuring our efforts are responsive to the needs and aspirations of adolescent girls, young women, gender-expansive youth of color and their allies. By engaging youth as partners in decision-making, we aim to foster greater representation, inclusivity, diversity, and innovation in our grantmaking activities.

Mental Health Is an Urgent Issue for Girls of Color

Over and over again, the Youth Advisory Council members stressed the importance of mental health as a core issue facing girls and gender-expansive youth of color. As one Youth Advisor, Kaila Pouncy, put it, “Young people in marginalized communities often face external barriers that can instill long lasting limiting beliefs about self-worth, where we belong in the world, and how to achieve our dreams….By centering open dialogue about mental health in our communities, we can develop stronger self-efficacy and resolve, empowering us to effectively heal, overcome challenges, and pursue our aspirations, ultimately enabling us to reach our fullest potential.”

These reports from the Advancing Girls Fund Youth Advisory Council align with disturbing research that shows the lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls’ mental health and well-being. A report in the Journal of Academic Emergency Medicine indicated the rates for emergency room psychiatric visits by girls remained elevated “beyond expected rates,” during the later years of the pandemic, despite numbers decreasing across other groups. In the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which measures the well-being of American high school students, the Centers for Disease Control reported 40% of students who responded to the survey continued to experience “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” A similar study in 2021 on the adolescent well-being amid the COVID-19 pandemic reported that while both boys and girls were affected by COVID-19, girls experienced a higher percentage of negative behavior and mental changes as a result of the pandemic. Co-author Dr. John Allegrante at Columbia University asserted “We are now seeing the ramifications of prolonged lack of social interaction paired with too much social media use, especially for girls” and “if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we must support our youth.”

Advancing Girls’ Leadership Means Supporting Girls’ Well-Being

Youth Advisor Sumaya Mohamed Ibrahim put it best: “It became clear during and after the pandemic that our generation is an activated one — we’re concerned for our communities and are constantly looking for ways to create a better world for one another. However, the very success of the movements we deeply care about and are involved in depend on us being WELL. Mental health and wellness must be at the forefront of any movement building strategy to ensure that we achieve our collective liberation.”

Through the Youth Advisory Council, the Advancing Girls Fund hopes to build a community network of strong, civic-minded young people who will influence the future direction of its programs. Our ultimate goal: to give young women and gender-expansive youth the support they’re telling us that they need.

Learn more about the Advancing Girls Fund.