Spotlighting Girl Up USC and Q&A with GirlUpUSC President Rumaisa Islam!
By: Tamanna Sood ‘24
Girl Up is a girl-centered leadership development initiative, focusing on equity for girls and women in spaces where they are often unheard and underrepresented. Girl Up was founded by the United Nations Foundation in 2010 as the first initiative of its kind dedicated to supporting girl’s education, health, and safety. Since then, the movement has grown exponentially. They operate a global network of regional affiliates impacting 195,000 girls and youth leaders in 152 different countries.
USC’s Girl Up chapter was started in 2019. They continue to hold meetings every two weeks where they cover discussion topics that involve intersectional feminism and women’s rights issues. Some of the topics they have discussed in the past are “Navigating Diversity in Student Orgs,” “Gender Stereotypes in Child Development,” and “Beauty Standards and Consumerism.” Girl Up also holds social events that are geared towards community building. Some of these socials have included tote bag painting, self-defense classes, and yoga in the park. Both meetings and social events are open to everyone, regardless of membership.
I first learned about Girl Up through my friend Rumaisa Islam, who coincidentally happens to be the president of the chapter this year. I recently got the chance to sit down with Islam to learn more about the organization.
Tamanna: Hi Rumaisa! I’m so happy I got the chance to talk to you today about GirlUp! I wanted to ask you what first attracted you to join Girl Up?
Rumaisa: I knew when coming into USC, immediately, that I wanted to join empowering student orgs, but, you know, we started on Zoom. So I thought it would be a little hard finding a club related to women’s rights or intersectional feminism and that type of advocacy, but luckily, I kind of stumbled on the page [for Girl Up], and they had applications open for officers. And I was like, let me apply and see what happens.
T: What's your personal favorite part of being a part of Girl Up and being president?
Rumaisa: This is a thing that I love, but also, simultaneously, is a little difficult for the club itself. But I love how low stakes the club is. We are there for you when you need it, and that’s the premise of the club. We don’t have a function point system, no membership fee, and have no requirements like that. In that way, membership retainment can be a little difficult, but I like for the nature of the club to be like that.
We’re here for you whenever you want to come. If you’ve never been to a meeting or you’ve been to every meeting, we welcome everyone the same way. I personally love the variety of people at our meetings.. I just think it’s really cool to have such a variety of people all the time.
T: What are some topics that you’ve covered in recent meetings?
Rumaisa: We’ve talked about navigating DEI through student orgs. For example, one of our E-board members is part of a sorority, so she shared about her experiences being a woman of color in Greek Life. We also talked about experiences like that in other non-Greek affiliated orgs. One of our recent presentations was called “Breaking Gender Norms in the Toy Box,” and it focused on how children’s toys and marketing geared towards children can propagate gender stereotypes from a young age. We discuss a whole lot of really interesting topics!
T: What are some of your favorite events the club has thrown so far?
Rumaisa: Last semester, we had this tote bag painting social that we combined with our educational presentation. We had a team who was leading a conversation on managing stress and things of that nature, and we combined that with the painting. We’ve done lots of cool events in the past. For example, last spring we had a yoga social which was really cool. We also had a self defense fundraiser where one of the self defense coaches came in and gave us a little class with some tips. We did that in contribution to raising money for a Domestic Violence Awareness fund.
T: What events do you have planned for Women’s History Month?
Rumaisa: We are still working out some of the details, but we do have a social event planned for this month that will happen probably after Spring Break. We also have our educational meetings every two weeks, which everyone is welcome to attend and join us for! We will absolutely be talking about Women’s History.
T: Is there any change you want to make on campus through Girl Up?
Rumaisa: In terms of DEI, I want Girl Up to be as inclusive of a space as possible. I know when I first joined, there were a lot of people who represented Greek life, and now we are shifting a little away from that. In terms of our meetings, I want to make sure that the meetings are open to everyone and not just cis women. I want to make Girl Up as accessible as possible to everyone regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, school background...
T: What goals do you have for Girl Up?
Rumaisa: One of my biggest goals is always to grow our membership base while still maintaining a relatively low stakes and safe space atmosphere. It’s something that is always on my mind!
T: If a person wanted to join Girl Up, how would they go about joining?
Rumaisa: We have a membership form in the bio of our Instagram (@GirlupUSC). The biggest thing that I would say is stay up to date with our Slack, Instagram, and newsletter. In terms of joining, you can really just show up to any event. Filling up a membership form helps us in order to keep things on track, but there isn’t any application or thing like that.
If Girl Up interests you, make sure to follow them on Instagram and attend their next event!
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