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She’s Helping Girls Become More Joyful, Healthy, and Confident
By Joseph Bednar
[email protected]
s someone with almost 20 years of experi- ence in the fields of psychology and social work, Alison Berman was no stranger to working with young people. And when she learned about a national organization
called Girls on the Run, something clicked.
“I had always wanted to work with kids and families,” she said of her motivation to earn a
bachelor’s degree in psychology from Oberlin College and a master’s degree in social work from Smith College, after which she ran therapeutic preschools, worked in outpatient, inpatient, and day treatment; and did a lot of work in schools with trauma-sensitive programs.
Then she learned, through a friend of a friend, about Girls on the Run (GOTR), a physical activity- based, positive youth-development program that uses running games and dynamic discussions to teach life
“The overarching goal is to increase confidence and have kids realize that they can do things that the”y didn’t think were possible.
skills to girls in grades 3-8.
“There was no council here at that point. And it
kind of fit into everything I was passionate about;
I used to do a lot of group work, so the curriculum really spoke to me in the sense of the social- emotional life-skills piece, and integrating a physically active component. I guess I always wanted to do something bigger than just the individual impact I felt like I was making.”
Each Girls on the Run chapter conducts two 10-week seasons per year, in the fall and spring.
Each session features a life-skills lesson drawn from
a nationally distributed curriculum. Meanwhile, each team tackles a community-impact project to give back to their community. Both seasons each year end with a 5K celebration, with the spring event typically being the larger of the two.
The Western Mass. council of GOTR launched in 2015 with 90 girls on six teams. Now, the chapter boasts 80 different teams — more than 1,800 girls in all — and more than 300 volunteer coaches across
Alison Berman
Council Director, Girls on the Run Western Massachusetts