Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F Osborne Foundation.

The Schillhahn-Huskey Foundation.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.

On today's show will feature two impactfu nonprofits who make a difference in the lives of young people in our area.

One inspires and equips girls to become strong leaders and to reach their full potential.

The other strives to make a positive difference in the lives of youth through one on one mentorship.

We're stronger together.

Chattanooga.

Stay tuned to learn more.

Welcome to Chattanooga.

Stronger together.

I'm Barbara Morton decor Paterson, chie executive officer of Girls Inc.

Is your guest today.

This organization is inspiring girls to be strong, smart and bold leaders through a variety of programs.

Welcome to Cora.

So glad you're here today.

Thank you for having us.

I want our audience to learn more about girls, but I also want to hear your story too.

Well, yes, I was born and raised here in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

on the West Side, what we consider downtown, and in that neighborhood was a lot of good and bad, a lot of challenges.

And I just remember my first day of kindergarten, my mother telling me about all the statistics that were placed against me because of where we lived in the three seven, 402, zip code and on that day, I made it my due diligence to defy the odds.

And so although I was exposed to those challenges, both good and bad, it helped me to be a critical thinker.

It helped me to be a good decision maker because I was determine So do everything that they said I could not do.

And I think that.

that grit and hard work, and willpower is what has led me to girls think of Chattanooga today.

Let's talk about some of those programs that girls Inc offers to our young ladies.

Yes.

So every day that we open our doors to, serve our young ladies through in-school, after school or seasonal camp, we have three goals.

And those goals are one to increase her knowledge, two to teach her a new skill set, and third, to change her attitude and behavior about living and learning.

And so what we focus on is the whole girl.

We want to make sure that she is supported academically, mentally and emotionally and so what we are able to do through those types of things are bring in programs that address her individual needs.

So we try extremely hard to be intentional and to customize the girls experience for each girl and each family.

We want to also help our girls with leadership development.

So we have programs such as Girls Take Charge, Discovery Gir and Seeing Leadership Institute.

They help them discover, their skills and talents and help them, create a pathway for life as they transition from girl who is a woman, who will you also start with them?

was it girls start academy?

The seven week bootcamp for kindergarten kids?

Yes.

So in our third year, with support of the city of Chattanooga, we have offer Girls Start Academy.

And just as you mentioned, it's a seven week boot camp.

So get our, young ladie to ready for beat girls school.

and so we work along Hamilton County schools to make sure that they are kindergarten ready.

We bring in a lot of community partners, take them on field trips so that the first day of Beat girls school is in is scary.

And we'd like to bring in, community partners so that they know that they are a part of that experience as well.

So how many kids can you take through that seven week boot camp?

so we can take up to 35 young ladies.

Okay, if they really enjoyed the boot camp and really want to get into girls.

So when they start kindergarten or first grade in the in the elementary schools, then there are programs in how many of our schools.

so we are in 25 Hamilton County schools are for girls start academy chain leadership Institute girls take charge wrote the college a career success.

And so that's all in Hamilton County.

That is also in Hamilton County.

Okay.

Do you go outside of Hamilton?

So we are in four schools in Marion County and we take, Discovery Girl girls take charge, Insane Leadership Institute.

And so Marion County, this is our second year in Marion County, again, increasing knowledge, teaching a new skill set and changing the attitud and behavior of our young ladies at South Pittsburg Elementary, middle, high and High School.

So what's Discovery Girls?

So Discovery Girl is, an elementary design program that, again, gets young ladies to think about interests, gets them exposed to careers.

But it's really a selfless, self reflection type of program.

Helps them think about goal setting even as early as the age of six years old.

gets them to think about critical thinking, healthy relationships, and decision making.

And those are thing that throughout the girls think network in the girls think experience.

We want to follow them through that continuum.

So they start with the discovery girl in elementary.

If they transition with us to middle school, then they take girls, take charge, and then when they get int high school, they're able to do, Teen Leadership Institute with road to college and career success.

And just this past fall, we were able to bring in a new program called Project Accelerate that now allows us to serve our girls two years after they graduate from high school, no matter what pathway that they decide to take.

so when you're going young girls, when they're going from elementary school to middle school, that's a huge transition.

Yes.

Emotionally, physically, mentally, yes.

All of those.

And so you're actually if the girls follow you, they can also be examples for younger other girls in their classrooms and stuff.

They're like, what's different about you?

What do you have that I want and maybe can then become part of?

Girls thin even in middle school like that, but you're also giving them tools on how to process those changes and educate themselves on this is what your body's doing.

But this is the external forces too.

Yes.

So all of our program and curricula is age appropriate, outcome driven and evidence based.

And so what we do is tailo our programs to fit the needs of our girls that we serve here in Hamilton County and also in Marion County.

And so, when we say age appropriate, when we're teachin our young ladies about the body, we think it's important for us to know exactly the anatomy in the physiology so that as you get older, then we can go into, those bodily changes and we can go into consent, we can talk about reproductiv rights and reproductive freedom.

Yeah.

that they have.

So we like to help them navigate, we want them to be strong, smart and bold, which equates to being healthy, educated and independent.

in the classrooms within their homes, their neighborhoods and communities.

And so when we're able to follow a girl year after year, we're able to be very intentional and place our in programs based off the goals that she said, and the place that she has.

So we want to help our retro reach our full potential.

And our programs allowed them to do that through intentional and impactful exposure opportunities.

And experiences.

And I like the fact that each grade level just builds on the next grade level like that.

So it's a huge continuum and everything.

And then they get into high school.

Yes.

And then what do you what do you do for them in high school?

so in high schoo we have programs such as impact, which is our teen advocacy program.

And so they go around and provide peer to peer, advocacy based off of 3 to 5, teen health issues that are prevalent within their cohorts, within their schools, within their communities.

that program has been around for about nine years.

then we have she she can she will, which is the program that is the result of unbought and, pass that is our 1 to 1 mentoring program where women from the community are selected to be mentors to our high school mentees.

And what they get to do is, see the accolades outside of what's on Google o what is in the local newspaper.

They get to see how these community women do all that they do.

But in addition, our mothers, our wives, our care caretakers and do things within their community, they get to see things their coworkers don't get to see, and they get to shar why their mentor is unbought and on pass.

And then we have Project Accelerate where we are again, bringing the 11th and 12th grade girls, along with their parent and family members, giving them prepare for the process of life after high school.

So it could b if you're interested in joining the military entrepreneurship, vocational technical program, our four year, opportunities, what we do is we give to help you create that, action plan.

And those goals with your parents.

So we do a lot of mixer's, jo fairs and things of that nature just to let them know about the opportunities.

we want them to see everything that they have, and we want them to make an informed decision on that, on what's bes for them as they continue to now navigate from young adulthood to womanhood.

Yeah.

And you also do scholarships, I think, don't you?

yes.

So we do have scholarship opportunities, through girls think national.

we have the largest all girls scholarship.

So girls think of Chattanooga.

For the last nine years, has been able to help, young ladies to appl in the 11th or 12th great year, for this scholarship.

And it ranges anywhere from 5 to $25,000 in our last year.

This year's recipient was Trinity Williams from Chattanoog School of the Arts and Sciences.

Trinity has been with us since the age of six.

and, she is now able to have, $25,000, to aid her in her next step, which she has yet to tell us at school.

she, well, let's see, but she's going to school to become a lawyer.

Wow.

It's amazing.

And you have a high success rate of the young ladies graduating out of girls Inc and actually going either to a two year or four year college.

So, we began tracking in 2007.

So 100% of the girls engaged in our afterschool and in school programs graduate from high school.

About 95% of them are going into four year, college and universities, and they are graduating within five and five and a half years of that.

project accelerate allows us, to follow our young ladies.

So if you feel as though you want to just jump into the workforce, then you have this coach that will talk to you about growth within the organization.

So what does it look like to begin an entry level?

But what is it look like to go into that level.

So whatever pathway, a young lady decides that she wants to explore, she is assigned a coach that is going to help her navigate, for the next two years.

Yeah.

Are there volunteer opportunities?

So yes we have volunteer opportunities for our afterschool programs and seasonal camps.

So whenever Hamilton County is closed for fall, spring and summer, we have opportunities, we have service projects.

And all of that information can be found on our website which is girl think of cha with tootsie's dot org or there you can also learn about our program tours.

we want you to come and see, girl in Action.

I think that you really get a sense of what we do.

We are on Instagram.

We are on LinkedIn and Facebook again.

Girls think of chat with services.

Right.

And I love your history.

I love your dos.

Yeah.

So, I previous board member of Girls Sake.

So I know I know all the wonderful things that that you guys have done over there.

And I just love the fact that you are starting with our young girls in kindergarten all the way through, and follow them all the way through into womanhood and into college and everything.

So yes, the goal is to just be a part of their village and, serving as the CEO.

I had that support when I walked in Sonoma Park Elementary School as a kindergartner, and I had that throughout.

And so we just want, ou families and communities to know that that is what girls thin is to be a safe space for girls to take risks, to explore, and to see themselves in, in, in any capacity that they want to.

And so, we're excited, to, to have our doors open and to serve more girls and more families.

Yeah.

It's wonderful to.

Cora, thank you so much for coming in today.

Thank you for having and telling your story.

We want to know how you serve your community.

Send us photos or videos of you or your family volunteering, and we may feature it on a future episode.

Email stronger@wtcitv.org or use the hashtag STRONGERWTCI on social media.

Welcome back.

We're joined by Jasmine LeBlanc co-founder and executive director of Ela library.

This organization nurtures knowledge and culture through story sharing in the East Lake neighborhood of Chattanooga.

It's a pleasure to have you here with me, Jasmine.

It's a pleasure to be here today.

I'm so interested in the.

Why why you started the Ela library.

Yes.

So I've been in Chattanooga for a handful of years, but when I had when I got here, I had my first child.

And so it was kind of my friends and I looking for like, how can we create a sense of community?

We have these little babies.

We feel isolated.

We have college educations, we have cars, but we have this sense of like cut off and disconnectedness for like, how much more so do our neighbors who don't have access to the actual family here, or access to just getting the places they want to in town?

So some friends and said, well, what can we do with where we are now with thes tiny little babies that we have?

And we said, well, we could clean our houses one day, we can open up our home and invite our neighbors t come and read and play with us.

so that's how we started.

We started in my living room, and then in my co-founders living room because, like, I had got pregnan and then she got pregnant again.

And so we just juggled living room for a little while based off of like, who had capacity.

So really just bringing people in, reading books, making art, sharing that community space at our homes.

so we read a book called Boo Fiesta, and then our minds went, this sounds like so much fun.

That's what we need here in Chattanooga.

So we threw our first book, Fiesta, and the community turned out, supported us.

And everyone said, wha are you going to do that again?

And so you created the library.

Yeah.

Which is now has gone from our living rooms to being completely mobile and just on the go to now having physical space that we occupy in the community.

So it's just not storytelling.

There's so much else that you do.

Right?

Well, it's all connected to storytelling.

Like how do we tell and share stories like we start with books?

Because as I like to say, it's a gateway to stories.

It's easy for people who might have issues, telling their story to to sit down and listen to someone tell a story kind of breaks.

some of those, some of those barriers that they have up about what a story is, and then we can have fun and play from there.

so you also do tutoring.

We do tutoring.

We, our kids, we want them to be able to enjoy and love stories.

So sometimes you need a little extra support, getting there with your reading, and getting there with your with your math to be able to, have the skills to do something.

So we like to support them in that way.

so we have some great tutors, who are there to work with, with people phonetically, both for children and adults who need help with their literacy.

That's amazing.

So I mean you actually have adults too that want to.

Yeah.

We've been able to support some adults as well who need help with their reading.

And that's been great because they feel like they're comfortabl enough in that space to sit down and play some learning games and to work on things, and I feel intimidated by giving it a try.

And that's what's really exciting.

People who haven't had the opportunities to have that space to learn, to be able to create that space for them.

Yeah.

So, congratulations.

The book store being open, that's that's amazing.

so before we get into the bookstore and the different books, let's talk about the Eastlak community, the diversity of it.

What what do you see there?

Latinos versus, the different cultures?

Oh, our community is full of so many different cultures and people, like, everyone looks and sees all of our tiendas and they're like, oh, there's a lot of Latino people there are, but they're all from very different countries, and they speak lots of different languages.

They all have individual cultures.

We have a lot of people from other countries as well, whether they're refugees or immigrants or just people who have lived here who have different family cultures.

And we love being able to celebrate that.

And so we try to have books and stories that represent that within our library space, that people can come in and see themselves and stories and be like, oh, well, this is from my country.

Or like, I haven't seen this book since I was a kid.

And so we try really hard to, to use stories as kind of the icebreaker, the idea, regardless of where someone's from.

Yeah, because I noticed that some of them are like German, Arabic, Armenian, Hindi, yeah.

you have all of that.

We try we, we like to find those books that are hidden places and highlight them and bring them out.

And there's so many amazing books.

And I also have a little problem when I travel, to picking up and bringing back stories that I want to share.

And then I have friends who do the same thing, who will be traveling or like, this would be a great book to to add to the library, and they'll bring books back from places that they've traveled for us, because the books that they bring back or the original books in that original language, not a translation, directs, and people are able to connect a lot more easily with that, because there's those cultural tones and references that when you translat a book, just aren't quite there.

There's something always usually missing in translation.

so we talked about, what is the celebration of children?

So, yeah, there's another book that we love called Book Fiesta which is why we create our event around is a celebration of worlds.

Children's day is what the book is about of like stories coming to life and people celebrating, Children's Day, which this, 2025 is 100th anniversary of World Children's Day, which is why we've switched the name of our event that we usually do, which has always been Book Fiesta to the Dia de sorry, Dia de Nino.

Easy for you to say, I know.

Tell me now.

And honor to in order to celebrate and honor that because we knew what we were doing was not necessarily something original.

We're just adding to a momentum and culture of celebrating, children and families and getting people out and to play together.

and we really want people to know a little bi more about the history of that.

And I think 100 years of celebrating a day of play is a big deal.

so we said, oh, let's just go ahead and switch the name, because Book Fiesta was alway a celebration of Children's Day.

And we wanted to really be able to just to lead with that.

And so this is like ou in a huge park area is that East Lake Park every year.

Okay.

And vendors come in and you have all of these cultures and they're doin all of their foods and arts and and it's like that food and art and ways for families and neighbors to play and connect together.

So we try to break down barriers and ways that, you know, kids want to play parents.

What we we want families to play with their kids.

So creating instances for people to play all over the space and activating the spaces.

So when I go out, the park is like, I just see potential and just like things that we could do in the space or ways to activate things.

And so it's also a way for my imagination and my friends imaginations to come to life and say, okay, how if I was here playing and I could do anything I wanted in this space, what would I do and how would I have my friends come play with me?

the donkey.

Yes.

Better, better.

Okay, so our biblio burrow.

burrow.

Okay.

So what' what's the significance of him?

So there is another amazing book called waiting for the Biblio Burrow.

And it is a story of a man named Luis who lives in, the country of Colombia.

And he is an educator.

And he was struggling to know with why his students weren't doing their homework.

And so he went out to he went out into the rural villages to see why students weren't doing their homework.

And he realized they didn' have access to books and paper.

so he spends his weekends with his two donkeys, Alpha and Beta, loaded with books and paper and supplies, and then goes through the mountains of Colombia and distributes books to children.

and then he comes back by it, sometimes later, and picks up those books and switches them out for them again.

So we really like.

So I just mentioned we were mobile for a really long time, and one of the things that we we thought was like, well, we could be like Luis and, and have our own Biblio burrow.

So we thought it would be also a great way to show up in the parks for some small scale events that weren't necessarily big.

But with so our donkey to come in, he's got a spot for art supplies and bookshelves for books, and so he's fully ready to g for us to descend on a location and activate the space and kind of have story times and art activities.

So.

And this is a real person.

Yeah.

Luis is a real person.

and this is what he's now.

Has he been to.

He has he has been to Chattanooga.

He actually came to Chattanooga, I forget which year.

But he was able to come and read his book and he's like elementary, to the children.

So he, he came, he read waiting for the biblio world.

So the kids in Spanish, and then we read it with him in English for families who didn't speak Spanish.

and then he told us that the donkey that we built would never be as lifelike as is better.

So we said challenge accepted.

he might not be as lifelike as his donkeys, but we have, we've had great people love Beto, and he's our welcoming flagship, character.

And so when Beto rolls out at our library to let people know that we are in and that they're welcome to come in and share in stories with us now, display to go to other schools and stuff like that.

So Beto does travel.

So third graders read waiting for the Biblio burro as part of their third grade curriculum in the fall.

So better get requests.

and in the fall to go out to visit schools.

He also gets a request sometimes to come to go downtown to events.

and, and sometimes w just take them out to have fun.

what is it that you would like our audience to know about the El brewery?

and how they could get involved?

Yeah.

So library is a place for people to make and share stories.

So whatever that means to you, we want to help you.

be able to tell and share your story.

So we welcome peopl to come through to the library.

And it's a it's a library.

You can come check out books, hang out.

We have chess clubs and book clubs and a garden.

Our garden picks volunteers on Monday evenings at 5 to 7 to come out and assist with the garden.

our bookstore takes volunteers six sort books during the week when donations com in, we take donations of books.

We take donations of money, we take measures of time.

Well, I think when it comes to the donation of books, wouldn't it be, you're very particular.

About what?

Books come in.

Well, we keep a curated selection of books at the library, but we take books and we get them out to tiny libraries.

We get them out to schools, we get them out to families that need books.

So as far as our library itself, like, we can select those.

And so if something comes in that we've been looking for, we take that.

But if not, we work o getting it back to other people.

And our bookstore, part of our bookstore space is book of books for sale.

But we have a whole free, tiny free library section where people can just come and get free books as well as stock up on books to fill up tiny libraries in their community.

So are you looking to expand any further.

or right now we're at our, the capacity of our footprint.

And we're just trying to support hours of code in our community because those are the people that we interact with every day and that we care fo and that we want to see thrive.

but our bookstore is a way to connec with other people in Chattanooga who want to come in and be part of our mission, but might not be able to commit as much time, to build relationships with our community.

Thank you for taking your time and your energy and your co-founder to start something so small, and then scale it up to where it's now, really helping the East Light community.

So thank you, thank you, and thank you for being on the show today.

Appreciate.

Oh, I appreciate the invitation okay.

And thank you for joining us.

We hope you've learned more about the incredible and inspiring work being done by our nonprofits.

So tell us what you think.

Email us at stronger at WTCI tv.org.

We use the hashtag stronger WTCI on social media.

I'm Barbara marty and for all of us here at WTCI, we'll see you next time.

Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F Osborne Foundation.

The Schillhahn-Huskey Foundation.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.