10 Years Later: AFFW Helps WCATY Give Talented Girls the Chance to Thrive

By: Ellie Schatz

Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth (WCATY) founder and president emerita Ellie Schatz is a familiar face around the AFFW offices. Her involvement started in the 1990s when AFFW supported Girls in Science workshops sponsored by WCATY in partnership with UW-Madison. But AFFW touched her heart-strings starting in 2000 with the $50,000 grant that was made to a program called Young Women of Promise. Then, as now, AFFW grants were driven by the overall goal of helping women and girls learn self-reliance and reach self-sufficiency. Here's one story from Ellie of how that goal was met.

In collaboration with the Northport and Packers Avenue Learning Centers and the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, 15 girls, then in 5th and 6th grades, were identified for their high academic potential. These girls represented a diversity of ethnic backgrounds and cultures: Hmong, African American, bi-racial, one each Latino and Caucasian. But they had more in common: they were poor; they were supported by a strong learning community; they were smart; they had no idea what being smart meant or how to translate their potential into a promising career and life.

Services covered that year included weekly counseling sessions led by a member of the UW Department of Counseling Psychology, testing, attendance at a weeklong WCATY accelerated learning program on a college campus, mentoring by both university students and professional women from the community, and regular communications from WCATY to them and their parents. Each girl committed to reading an hour a day. Each girl attended a college- and career- planning event. They came to lovingly call this special program YWOP, the acronym for the project, and the Boys and Girls Club group composed the following poem:

Many of the girls became fixtures at WCATY, attending programs into and through high school. Today, in their words, they are strong; they are survivors. They have all graduated from high school. Most of them are in college. Two of them received the coveted four-year college scholarships granted by the Madison Rotary Foundation.

You may remember Dot McDonald. At the 2001 AFFW Annual Event, just following 9-11, she performed a soliloquy from The Diary of Anne Frank, ending with the words, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." All 15 girls were present to let AFFW know that they appreciated AFFW donors' goodness at heart. Dot returned to AFFW and MCF several times during her high school years to open an event with the national anthem, another song of celebration, or another touching monologue. She is now attending Howard University in Washington D.C., part of a highly selective group of students chosen to pursue theater. Dot is living her dream.

The WCATY Young Women of Promise join so many other women and girls who have been touched by AFFW. Ten years ago they were ten and eleven years old, learning that resiliency involves grit, takes time, leads to success and independence. Today they have reached young adulthood. They are pursuing their education. They believe in their dreams. They are living examples of AFFW's mission: self-reliant young women who have reached self-sufficiency partly because you gave them a helping hand.