New Rise2Raise Collective will connect EmBe with middle, high school girls for yearlong programming

This paid piece is sponsored by EmBe.

Kat Loewe is learning at a young age what it takes to turn a vision for change into reality.

She’s among the first of what EmBe hopes will be many middle and high school girls who learn from a new series of programs how to turn their passions into actionable change, while building leadership and other skills along the way.

For Loewe, an incoming junior at Lennox High School, the big dream is helping lead her school to offer sex education. She has spent nearly two years advocating for it, publishing articles and reaching out to like-minded adults.

“It’s a process,” she acknowledged. “I finally found some adults in the community who also really agree with it.”

Loewe also has been working on her effort with mentorship from Allison Sinning, EmBe’s director of youth programming, and now is lending her own insight to an initiative that Sinning is leading.

EmBe’s newly launched Rise2Raise Collective offers a collection of programs that equips girls to harness their power and elevate others through peer-to-peer mentorship and education, community action and connections to leaders, and a fresh supply of resources and opportunities.

“We just haven’t had as many avenues to serve middle school and high school girls in the past, and when we look at our programming overall, we want to create a pathway where a girl can engage with EmBe in elementary school and stay engaged all the way through her educational and professional life,” Sinning said.

For Loewe, that began as an elementary student in the Girls on the Run program.

“I am not the biggest fan of running, but it was a lot of endurance. It was a lot of learning to do hard things. It was supporting each other, which is an important lesson for young kids to learn quickly,” she said.

Her connection with EmBe continued in middle school, where she participated in Camp Changemaker, which connects middle school boys and girls with the issues facing the Sioux Falls community and what nonprofits are doing to address them.

“It was very eye-opening as a middle school kid to see Sioux Falls, somewhere I know so well, but then see different perspectives of the people that live there. It was very, very informative,” she said.

And now, Loewe is one of five high school girls helping Sinning form the new programs as a member of her youth advisory board. The model for Rise2Raise is an effort Sinning helped lead in Liberia that drew international recognition for mentoring and empowering young women.

“We want to inspire girls to think deeply about what they want in the future, no matter how big or unconventional, and we want to address how to be an authentic leader and lead in your school or community,” Sinning said “Just helping girls realize they have abilities and talents and power to make meaningful and lasting change.”

The girls who gave input into the collective also stressed the importance of addressing mental health through resiliency strategies such as stress management and how to work through anxiety.

“It’s hard to stay well-balanced humans in high school,” Loewe said. “There so much – stress, college, friendships, being successful in business – so we had conversations as an advisory council about what we need as high schoolers to help us take better care of our mental health.”

Beginning this fall, the Rise2Raise Changemaker Academy will turn the middle school camp concept into a yearlong program that will meet monthly to help support community action.

“The girls will work on action teams to identify research and plan a passion project around a community or social issue,” Sinning said. “We’re excited to help them develop a really cool, inspirational project around how they can make community change.”

The second new program will be the Rise2Raise High School Leadership Program, modeled after EmBe’s Women’s Leadership Program, which will hold six sessions and match participants with mentors for at least three meetings.

“That’s been an incredibly successful program, and we’re excited to offer it at a high school level, meeting young women at a time when mentorship can make an especially powerful difference in their lives,” Sinning said.

Both programs will begin taking applications Aug. 15.

“It’s all very new, so we’re piloting everything to see what we can learn,” Sinning said. “Our youth advisory board has been an outstanding sounding board along the way and has been instrumental in helping guide our efforts.”

The programs are unique in that they draw on direct input from girls who are living the same challenges and looking for the same opportunities as participants, Loewe said.

“You can’t create effective programming unless you talk to actual high schoolers who are willing to share some personal information on their struggles and what they really need,” she said. “I feel like it’s an opportunity to finally make some change and be empowered as individuals, and it feels good to know I can help someone else and I can get something back from that too.”

To get connected to Rise2Raise, click here or email [email protected].