Dana Hall’s Girl Up club, headed this year by senior Julia Ran and juniors Annie Xu and Samiha Farooqi, is starting back up again for the 2018-2019 school year after two years of inactivity, and this time, maybe for good.

Girl Up is a club that is based on the Girl Up UN Foundation, whose purpose is to help shape women all over the world to be leaders. Girl Up has 1,800 clubs all over the United States and the world, and they annually raise money for the Girl Up Foundation and host activities and celebrations.

For a while, there has been a pattern for Dana Hall’s chapter of the club to hold one meeting in the beginning of the year and then leave its members hanging, but Ms. Panahi, the faculty advisor, is determined to make sure it keeps running. Now more than ever, “the world needs organizations like Girl Up to advocate for and raise awareness about the issues facing women and girls worldwide.”

Girl Up, as said before, is a great resource for creating more leaders in our male dominated world. It’s also a platform to raise awareness for various different issues affecting all women, from hosting discussions during Domestic Violence Awareness Month to bringing light to various issues affecting women in the LGBT+ community. For trihead Annie Xu, “in an all-girls school like ours, it’s especially important to have an organization that helps people realize they have the power to change the world.”

“I didn’t actually know that Girl Up existed,” mentions Bri Liddell, a junior and now dedicated member of the club, “but I think Girl Up has an open stage to have a great time and get people interested in feminism.”

Ms. Panahi also mentioned some goals she has for Girl Up, particularly one about getting the club involved in Women’s Advocacy Day, saying, “our girls can get involved in some lobbying at the State House this spring!” Girl Up is all about having more female leaders all over the world and is a powerful club to have anywhere, but especially at Dana Hall.