Newark Teen Finds Her Voice In NJ Girls Leadership Program

NEWARK, NJ — The following article comes courtesy of the New Jersey Department of Children and Families. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.

You’d never guess 16-year-old Karen Otavalo was once afraid of public speaking as she stared at the webcam and confidently spoke to a virtual crowd.

The Newark teen explained how important it was to provide detailed information in government grant applications before commenting on society’s broader patriarchal trends. Her fellow young panelists nodded along in their own Zoom squares before sharing their expertise and opinions, too.

After all, they had just awarded $90,000 in state grant money to youth organizations from every corner of New Jersey – they knew what they were talking about.

The group – all New Jersey high school and college students – were part of a unique program designed to develop girls’ leadership skills. The NJ Justice Collaborative for Girls, with funding from the New Jersey Division on Women, hired the young women to research, review and analyze grant applications from nonprofit organizations seeking to empower youth throughout the state.

For Otavalo, who moved to New Jersey from Ecuador five years ago, participating in the advocacy group helped refine her English language skills – and it helped her find her voice.

On Saturday, a few of the young women shared their experience at the NGO CSW forum, an annual symposium for nonprofits that runs parallel to the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women conference.

“I come from a place where sometimes women aren’t given the power to do what they want to do,” Otavalo said at the symposium. “I internalized that, and it really damaged how I started to view myself. It caused me to inflict a lot of emotional pain on myself.”

The barriers she faced seemed universal to the other young people in the group. One young woman recounted feeling patronized and dismissed when she talked to administrators at her high school; another mentioned holding back her opinions when adults were in the room.

The New Jersey Justice Collaborative for Girls gave them the space to speak up and be the decision-makers. The group spent several months vetting ten organizations’ grant applications, diving into everything from their fiscal stability to their letters of recommendation.

It wasn’t a classroom exercise; they were dealing with real-world money with real-world impact.

They were excited about details in the applications that seemed to cater to teenagers’ needs. One organization planned to create a “nap circle” where exhausted teens could choose to rest before diving into their afterschool activities; another planned to give youth a stipend for participating, which is important to teens choosing to forego a part-time job.

By September, the group had chosen three nonprofit “collaboratives,” with one in each region of New Jersey – North, Central, and South. The collaboratives will, in turn, reach out to teen girls in their regions to integrate their needs and passions into their new programs.

“Who knows better what young people need than young people themselves?” NJ Department of Children and Families’ Director of the Division on Women, Anna Martinez said. “In New Jersey, we listened to the voices of our girls through community conversations. They redefined leadership to include advocacy and social justice. This includes a focus on inclusion of all girls and gender-expansive youth.”

For Otavalo, participating in the NJ Justice Collaborative for Girls was transformative. She got a first-hand look at the inner workings of government and nonprofit systems.

“Soon after I moved to Newark, the pandemic hit,” she said. “NJ Justice Collaborative was one of the first organizations I joined right out of the pandemic, and it helped me find my voice. It is easier to speak up when you are passionate about the topic and have something to say.”

Each girl in the group was paired with a mentor, who helped guide them through the grant selection process, as well as helped them identify their personal passions or work on their self-esteem.

The goal was to create a space where adults talked less and youth talked more, explained NJ Justice Collaborative for Girls Senior Director Aysha Khan.

“Being able to lead gives us confidence,” said Jasmin Langomas, a NJ Justice Collaborative for Girls participant and freshman at Kean University. “It makes me feel so good when I’m the one sending the emails, when I’m the one making decisions, when I’m the one making plans.”

Funding for the grants started with the CDC’s Rape Prevention Education Grant funds and was given to the NJ Division on Women Rape Prevention Education program. Division on Women leaders then chose The NJ Justice Collaborative for Girls to hire and organize the statewide group of teens to make the final decision on which nonprofits would get the grants.

The teens are now working to evaluate and analyze the long-term impact of the programs they funded.

Yet, they’ve already felt the impact of participating in a youth-led organization in their own lives. From her home in Newark, where just a few years ago, she struggled to speak up in class, Otavalo tells me she is considering a career in international relations.

She wants to work at the United Nations.

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