Girl Up club celebrates inaugural year, looks to spread love

Central High School offers its students many clubs and other activities. Every year, new ones are added to the available options for extracurriculars. This year, one of the newest clubs is Girl Up. It was described by Quincy Carlin, the president of the club as having the overall goal to “bring girl empowerment to girls around the world.” Girl Up is a club that’s sponsored by the United Nations. They say it is, “Girl Up is a global leadership development initiative, positioning girls to be leaders in the movement for gender equality.” All around the world there are over 2000 Girl Up clubs with more than 40,000 members all dedicated to promoting gender equality. 

Seniors Quincy Carlin and Olivia Drobny are the co-presidents of Central’s chapter of Girl Up. They started the club here so that they could take part in empowering and uplifting girls at Central and throughout the community. Carlin first heard about Girl Up last January and immediately knew that there were lots of people at Central who would want to take part. She believes that a group like Girl Up will help people who are looking for a way to promote women’s rights have an outlet to do so instead of just going to protests once a year. They want to encourage diversity and open up the club to all types of people throughout the school. Because of that they’re attempting to advertise Girl Up on social media in order to reach a wider audience than just their circle of friends.  

As a UN requirement to be an official Girl Up club, they have to have five events throughout the year. Those events can be events for the community, awareness events, or they can be fundraising events for girls in nations that are developing. They hope to hold one of those events in the coming weeks as a fundraiser for girls’ education in Uganda. The most important thing is to, “spread awareness for how important it is for girls to have access to education and other resources.” Quincy and Olivia’s biggest goal of the club at central is to inspire girls past their tenure here. After graduation they plan on passing Girl Up and its responsibilities down to other students who will carry on the message of, “spreading girl love and empowerment because people don’t give girls enough credit.”