The Tyra Banks TZONE at the Lower Eastside Girls Club will be a leadership development center within the Girls Club. Through a rich mix of career development workshops, mentoring, experiential learning opportunities, financial literacy initiatives and community-wide events, hundreds of preteens and teens will build self-esteem, achieve greatness in their lives, and prepare for life as entrepreneurs and change-makers in the world. The Tyra Banks TZONE at the new Lower Eastside Girls Club Center for Community will be a leadership development center within the Girls Club.

Adolescence, the pre-teen and teen years are the most complex developmental years in a contemporary girl’s life - terrifying, turbulent, and terrific all at once. It’s a time when girls’ bodies, families, friends, schools and community are demanding growth and change. For many inner-city girls living in poverty, low self-esteem, disengagement from school, pervasive community violence, risky behaviors, and sexual experimentation become the hallmarks of a trip down a slippery personal slope from which recovery is often difficult. The Tyra Banks TZONE at the LESGC will offer girls a world filled with hope, opportunity, and possibility for the future.

About The Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC)

Founded in 1996, the mission of the Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC) is to provide a place where girls and young women 8-23 can grow, learn, have fun, and develop confidence in themselves and their ability to make a difference in the world. The LESGC strives to deliver strong arts, literacy, science, health and leadership programs, and to provide girls with the vision to plan - and the tools to build - their future. With over 16 years of experience, the LESGC has evolved from a small, all-volunteer program serving 20 girls to providing support and essential programming to approximately 300 girls.

Current programs are based on a project-based experiential learning model of education focused on ethical, entrepreneurial and environmental awareness and leadership. Activities and workshops in the arts, science and technology, health and wellness, literacy, world of work and civic engagement, aim to assist girls in discovering their individual skills and passions, and developing their full potential as informed, involved and responsible young women.

In the fall of 2012, LESGC will open their NEW state-of-the-art, sustainable Center for Community which will allow the expansion of programs, integration of co-educational services as well as job training, health and community support. Additionally, through the partnership between The Tyra Banks TZONE and The Lower Eastside Girls Club girls ages 8-18 will have the opportunity to follow a specialized curriculum that address the whole girl, building self-confidence by providing skills, knowledge and opportunity at critical developmental times of adolescence.

www.girlsclub.org