Page 7 - BusinessWest February 20, 2023

“The approach has been, ‘we’re not going to make this for you without you.’ Every part of the process involves the stakeholders; they have to be part of it, so that, in the end, this will be a building we will all be proud of.”
programs staged in it — was so important to her development that she signed on to get involved in finding and creating a new home.
“I know there’s a lot of afterschool programs and online stuff, but having the actual physical space where people can congregate and be who they need to be around people who advocate for them and champion them is a very unique thing to have for women,” she said. “So it was very important for me to get involved in this project.”
And like the others we spoke with, she said this has been a chal- lenging journey, but an invaluable learning experience as well.
“It was hard and crazy, and it wasn’t the journey everyone thought it would be,” she noted. “We ended up where we needed to be, but it was hard; it was intense.”
Designs on Growth
As Parker and Rivera-Colón led BusinessWest on a tour of the facilities, they stopped in a number of the emerging spaces. In each one, they talked about how they would enable Girls Inc. to serve more girls and expand its mission.
The renovations were scheduled to enable significant amounts of program space to be ready this summer, said Parker, adding that, given the property’s prior uses as a home to lawyers, engineers, and other professionals, minimal work will be needed to prepare the space for the agency’s staff and administration.
These emerging spaces include:
• A community room, a large space suitable for both small- and large-group activities. It will be the site of healthy-living program- ming, including dance, active games, yoga, and meditation;
• Maker space, which will be the cornerstone of the Eureka! program, where eighth-grade girls begin a five-year journey toward possible careers in STEM fields. The space will be educational and fun, with hands-on activities; and
• A teen lounge, a space for teen girls to call their own. A relaxed and empowering environment, it will be loaded with college- readiness resources and will host a diverse range of teen-centered programs.
The renovation work at the agency’s new home — and many stages of the process that came before it — have, as noted earlier,
The red hard hats at the home of Girls Inc. reflect a project that has been an adventure and a learning experience on many levels.
provided learning experiences for girls involved with the agency, said Parker, noting that teens gave tours to donors and potential donors.
Meanwhile, some of the Eureka! program teens learned about architecture and design from the team at Kuhn Riddle, led by president Aelan Tierney (one of BusinessWest’s Women of Impact for 2022), and actually
made one of the design decisions on one of the
Girls Inc.
Continued on page 78
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