The female students at CHS have been working hard to get the new club, Women in Leadership, up and running. The club was founded by Rowan Burkel (‘27), who wanted to empower young women through leadership opportunities. With strong support from staff, the club was established to help members succeed and find their voices.
“I just want to make sure that, as we encourage young women today, they can be whatever they want to be,” club advisor Heather Hugg said.
The club hopes to impact its members by inspiring them to step out of their comfort zones and be able to pursue something they are interested in. They are planning a variety of activities, like donating food and resources to women’s refuges to help uplift women in the community.
“[Our main goals are] raising money for causes, doing charity work, helping the women's shelter and shadowing jobs,” Hugg said.
Before being able to do these larger projects, the club first needs finances. They are applying for grants and doing bake sales to get some starting money to make their projects more impactful.
“So we're going to first do fundraising, because we need money. Once we have that, then we’ll be able to donate to different foundations,” vice president of the Women in Leadership club Leighton Diesing (‘27) said.
Once the club raises enough money to get started, it needs to think of how they are going to make a difference. Right now, they are planning to make posters and social media posts to help raise money for breast cancer awareness. One of the things that they plan to do is deliver baskets of flowers to female patients in the hospital, along with donating money to breast cancer research foundations.
“Right now we’re finding the ideas to start off, like we're planning breast cancer awareness events,” Burkel said.
With big ideas in mind, the Women in Leadership club is focusing on gaining members to help expand their goals. The leaders believe that promoting the club and awareness of it will be important to creating a stable and long-lasting organization.
“Positive words about it out there are important so that we're getting people to join. There are a lot of advertisements that we have to do right now, and generating ideas about how we are going to make a difference, ” Burkel said.
Diesing said that she was drawn to the idea of a Women in Leadership club because there is nothing like it at CHS, and it could help girls feel more confident in their future. If a member wants to be a dentist, the club can set up a shadowing opportunity so that they can go and experience that line of work.
“I think Women in Leadership is unique because it really is designed around what our members’ passions are, and what they want to pursue. So I think it's different from the other clubs because it's really formed by the members,” Burkel said.
