A day to explore your future: spread your wings! This impactful slogan is the first thing viewers see when they enter the Marin Teen Girl conference’s website, an event dedicated to empowering young women, providing resources and building a community.
Celebrated last Sunday in San Rafael, the conference brought together teen girls in grades 8-12 from across Marin to learn, celebrate and share about what being a woman is all about.
There are a variety of events from which the participants can choose, divided in three blocks. The girls also get the opportunity to hear from inspiring speakers, ranging from lawyers to business women, who shared their experiences and advice with them.
In addition, the students are able to participate in workshops, both in English and Spanish, to learn more about topics relevant in today’s world. Some examples of the sessions conducted are “From Lab to Label: How Natural Beauty Products are Made”, “Fueling Confidence: Nutrition & Wellness for Teens” and “Be Your Own Bodyguard! Practical Self-Defense.”
Beatriz Ballesteros, a sophomore at SD, participated in a session called “Wi$E Up: Financial Education for Teen Girls.”
“I learned how to properly manage and organize my money for the future,” Ballesteros said. “Also, how to save up to achieve my dreams. It was really well explained.”
Kirsten Pitcher, a junior at San Domenico and a member of the teen girl Ambassadors in the conference highlights the uniqueness of the experience.
“The best part about the Marin Teen Girl conference is that every single workshop and presenter there was chosen by the Ambassadors,” Pitcher said. “Everything [in the conference] is designed for teen girls, by teen girls.”
Although each attendee of the conference had to choose three individual events to participate in, at the end of the day everyone came together to listen to a keynote speaker, Christy Smith, the executive director of an organization called Emerge California.
The association trains Democratic women to run for elected office in the state of California, and win. The organization internationally recruits women from minority ethnic groups and equips them with the resources needed to achieve their goals.
“She gave a really important presentation about supporting and collaborating with other women, especially with how competitive the culture is between girls nowadays,” Pitcher said. “It promoted empowerment, being different and being confident.”
In the conference, there was an opportunity to attend a career panel of female leaders in male industries, which gave an insight on the struggles that different women overcame in their jobs.
Liza Kulcsar, a junior at SD, was inspired by the experience.
“It was great to hear from women in fields that are close to what I want to do, like creating a business and making it so worldwide that you can make an impact with it,” Kulcsar said. “Seeing how much they worked was very impressive and it was so worth it for them.”
As the day wrapped up and the attendees started to leave, the pure essence of the Marin Teen Girl conference could be felt in the air: unity and the power to change the world.
“The conference is about connecting women to opportunities that they hadn’t heard about before,” Pitcher said. “It joins all the different communities of Marin in one place for the same purpose.”
At the very end of the conference, the teens had indeed been given a new purpose — an opportunity to spread their wings and fly.
