THIEF RIVER FALLS
Early grant support from the Thief River Falls Area Community Fund helped spur efforts to bring a program that builds self-esteem in adolescent girls to the local community.
“The Thief River Falls Area Community Fund made the program possible,” said Allyson Hopperstad, volunteer site director for BIO Girls – Thief River Falls. “They have lots of amazing members and they’re very well-connected in the community. I think it gave us that recognition as a trusted community effort.”
The BIO Girls program – BIO stands for Beautiful Inside + Out – was founded in 2013 in the Fargo/Moorhead area and has been spreading throughout rural communities in the Midwest ever since, driven by a mission to improve girls’ self-esteem through a 12-week program focused on self-empowerment and service to others.
The inaugural session of BIO Girls in Thief River Falls culminated at the end of June with 40 girls from second through sixth grade running a 5K as dozens of supporters lined the route to encourage and cheer them on.
“I get that question a lot – “Why do you target such young ages?” – and it’s because we’re trying to give them the skills before the need is already there, when the intervention is a lot harder,” Allyson said.
THE GOAL: BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM
Data shows that girls are struggling at almost double the rate of boys with mental health issues, according to BIO Girls. Six in 10 adolescent girls battle low self-esteem, with girls’ self-esteem peaking in third grade and hitting their low in sixth grade.
BIO Girls aims to combat exactly that.
Through 90-minute weekly sessions over 12 weeks, the girls learn life skills, receive small-group mentoring, and participate in a non-competitive physical activity. Curriculum revolves around four pillars: mental wellness, healthy relationships, leadership, and kindness.
“We have programs right now in about 75 communities throughout four states,” said Betsy Stadick, program manager for BIO Girls. “At the program level, we’re 100 percent volunteer driven. Our ability to bring a program to a new town is 100 percent dependent upon a woman out there saying “Hey, why not me, I can do this,” and then they take on a big project to make it happen. It’s not for the faint of heart.”
A key component of the program is that it is open to all girls fitting the age requirements without barriers due to funding. The full cost of one participant is $212, with a suggested registration fee of $67.50. But the program deploys a “pay as you can” approach by offering scholarships, while opening opportunities for those who may be able to pay more to do so.
Each site director raises funds locally and corporately to offset the cost for participants. This is why early support from the Thief River Falls Area Community Fund was so key: It illustrated the trust of the local community in the program while local champions sought additional sponsorships and funding.
“Allyson pointed us in the direction of the (community fund) as a place that would probably be really open to hearing what we have say, and they granted us for the first season (and next year’s planned second season),” Betsy said. “The interest and demand (in Thief River Falls) has been outstanding. Sometimes, it’s really hard to get people’s attention in a new town … (but) we filled within the first hour of registration, which is almost unheard of in a brand-new town – our waitlist was around 20 girls.”
For Allyson, she had the sponsors lined up, she had the mentors, the guest speakers, the community involvement. But registration was that final hurdle.
“I was thinking, ‘If we don’t get 40 (girls), it’s going to be heartbreaking,’ and then, almost instantly, it filled up,” she said. “I’m a nurse and my background is holistic nursing. Just to see that parents and community members value the social-emotional aspect of raising children now is a huge testament to how far we’ve come and what we value now.”
TEACHING GIRLS THEY CAN DO HARD THINGS
In Thief River Falls, the school district allowed BIO Girls to meet weekly at Challenger Elementary. This was a benefit not only because the use of the space was offered at no charge, but also because 95 percent of program participants attended school there.
“We wanted to take the issue of transportation out of the equation, because some of the little girls who might need this program the most are the ones whose parents aren’t going to be able to drop them in at 3 o’clock and get them to BIO Girls,” Allyson said.
A key part of the program is that the girls train together, non-competitively, to be able to complete a 5K at the end of the 12 weeks. (Note: Running is the traditional program offered through BIO Girls; additional programs in select communities now offer cross-training and yoga.)
“Running is important because it teaches the girls discipline and teaches them goal-setting,” Allyson said. “It teaches them that they can do a hard thing. It doesn’t mean that we’re trying to create runners. We’re trying to just get them to see that, hey, your body’s powerful. You can set a hard goal and you can meet that.”
Meanwhile, the girls are partnered with mentors and guides who keep building them up, who cheer them on throughout the entire process.
“By week seven, it was May, it’s getting hot, we’re running now well over a mile, and they’re tired, they don’t know if they really want to do this anymore,” Allyson reflected, “But they are always asked to just show up every week, we’ve got you – and so they do, and they did, 40 little girls, every week. Then, at the end, the 5K is really to kind of show them, you did a 5K! If you look statistically at how many people in their life run a 5K it’s actually really small.”
