Girls' LEAP (formerly LEAP Self-Defense)

CONTACT:

15 Perry Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
781-283-2904
www.girlsleap.org

Deborah Weaver, co-founder and executive director

DESCRIPTION:

Girls’ LEAP (Lifetime Empowerment & Awareness Program—Cat ’01) provides free training in self-defense and safety skills—e.g., confidence-building, decision-making, self- assertion, how to defuse potentially violent situations—to underserved girls, ages 8-18. As with many Catalogue charities, their excellence, positive reputation, and modest size,have produced growth. Founded in 1997, by 2001 LEAP had helped 500 girls; now they help over 250 annually, and are still growing. To manage this they have made a strategic decision: to add a wholesale service to their retail line—i.e., to create a Girls’ LEAP Training Institute (GLTI) that will train and certify trainers from other charities to add the LEAP curriculum to their existing programs. Five organizations are already in line for 2005 with four trainees apiece, and since each one can then graduate sixty girls, 300 will receive safety training in the first year alone. Multiplying the faculty will produce exponential increases in productivity—which of course means that a great many more disadvantaged girls' and young women’s lives will be enhanced and safer. You can help launch GLTI; it will cost only $20,000. This is a phenomenal growth investment with a proven winner.

(2004: HUMAN SERVICES: Girls and Women: General)