MHS Girl Up Club
In her best case scenario, Messalonskee junior Brynn Lilly hoped to see Girl Up generate a Pink Out for the home girls’ basketball game against Cony.
But if the latest project by the Messalonskee High School chapter of the International organization, scheduled last Friday night, Jan. 13, doesn’t fill the stands to capacity, Lilly said she won’t be disappointed.
“We are hoping for a big turnout,” Lilly said, “but, really, any turnout would be a positive because it’s really about just supporting the team.”
Girl Up is all about achieving equity between the genders, a situation that is far from reality in many countries across the globe, including the United States.
Attendance at sporting events is simply one example of this lack of equal treatment but one of many that Lilly said Girl Up believes can be addressed and remedied. The stands in almost every sporting event have far more fans when the competition is between boys.
“The fact is our community does not give the same level of support to girls’ sports,” said Messalonskee English teacher Alicia Wolfe, who serves as advisor for the Girl Up club.
Lilly, though, said the club saw the inequity as an ideal problem to take on.
“There are things in our community that are in our control,” she said, “and I think we can make changes to them, so why wouldn’t we?”
It was this philosophy that motivated Lilly to initiate forming a Girl Up club at Messalonskee last fall. Lilly said Principal Paula Callan was supportive immediately, a reaction Callan confirmed without hesitation.
Girl Up first met in December and now boasts about two dozen members, including two boys.
Lilly stressed that Girl Up is open to young people of all identities.
“We don’t want people to think of it as an all-girls’ club,” she said.
Wolfe was happy to sign on as club advisor.
“I agreed to it,” she said, “because I see the value in the [organization].”
Lilly and fellow members of Girl Up meet every Friday during Wolfe’s guided study period.
The United Nations Foundation founded Girl Up about 12 years ago and now has affiliates in 150 countries and all 50 states.
Lilly said she first became aware of the organization when her older sister Paige helped start a chapter at the University of Maine at Farmington.
As its first formal initiative, Messalonskee’s Girl Up group launched Project Period, an effort to supply all girls’ and unisex bathrooms at Messalonskee with feminine hygiene products, a plan the club successfully implemented.
Lilly said the club’s concerns are not limited to the high school.
“A big focus of the organization as a whole,” she said, “is community outreach.”
Thus members of Messalonskee’s Girl Up showed their support for women entrepreneurs in the area last month by visiting Sunrise Bagel in Waterville, a bakery owned and founded by a woman.
Lilly said the club’s next project is to raise funds to help support a shelter for women in operation in Augusta.