Girl Up decorated these packages to send off to the homeless shelter. Tasmia Puspa, co-founder of Girl Up, says the club wanted to “make it look like a birthday gift.”
Photo courtesy of Mrs. Jodie Allen
New to Independence, Girl Up club started the year off with a service project in the community by assembling COVID care packages for the Embry Rucker Shelter in Reston. Co-presidents sophomores Zoya Rahman and Tasmia Puspa founded the club this year in the midst of the pandemic and the new distance learning environment.
Girl Up is an organization all about lifting up girls in their community. Their official website’s mission statement reads that the specific chapters, “engage girls to stand up for girls, empowering each other and changing our world.”
The club’s vision is to ultimately create a new world where girls have the opportunity to be their best, most authentic selves. They say, “Girl Up envisions a world where every girl can reach her full potential. A world where girls lead the way to bigger dreams and happier days, healthier communities and stronger nations. A world where girls are empowered and our future is brighter because of it.”
At first, the club was struggling to find activities to complete for the meetings. Rahman says, “we were also facing the challenge of meeting the criteria of everything being socially distant and connecting with the club members and getting to know everyone when we can’t see each other in person.”
Members of Girl Up picked up the care packages along the Kiss-and-Ride on Nov. 9. They then met over Google Meet to decorate them before they dropped them back off at school on Nov. 23 to be delivered to the shelter.
Puspa explained the pick-up saying, “Members are going to come here and pick up the boxes, and then for our next meeting we’re going to be putting it together and decorating it together as a group.”
Sophomore Monami Ghosh, a member of Girl Up, picks up her COVID care package from the kiss-and-ride.
Photo courtesy of @independencegirlup on Instagram
Co-presidents Puspa and Rahman along with the club’s sponsor, Mrs. Jodie Allen, delivered the packages recently on their own time just in time for the upcoming holiday season.
Rahman describes how the club’s mission aligns with their first service project. “We chose to construct the COVID care packages because our club is all about helping the community and trying to make a positive impact on our environment. With this project we were able to do just that.”