Women make up only 21 percent of leadership roles at nonprofit organizations with more than $25 million budgets, according to the “Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” study from the Women’s College of the University of Denver and The White House Project.

And minority women, including African Americans, make up an even smaller percentage. Here are some amazing African-American women who are leading cool nonprofit organizations across the country.

Beverly Bond, CEO of Black Girls Rock!
Launched in 2006, Black Girls Rock! is a youth enrichment and empowerment program based in New York that encourages young black women to get involved in music, culture, and the arts. Founder Beverly Bond has grown the organization to include a leadership camp and an annual awards show, which took place for the seventh time in 2012 and aired on BET on November 4.

(Black Enterprise) — Through the years, the Girl Scouts of America has had many exemplary black women among their membership ranks who have learned courage, confidence, leadership, and civic responsibility and taken those skills to the achieve success at the top of their industries. From science to entertainment to media to politics to sports, the impact is undeniable: Jackie Joyner Kersee, Queen Latifah, Condoleezza Rice, Venus Williams, Keke Palmer, Tatyanna Ali, Mariah Carey, Florence Griffith-Joyner, Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee, Marian Anderson, Glenda Hatchett … the list goes on and on. Check out more on the history of the organization as well as seven top business leaders who turned Girl Scouts badge earning into industry bankability.

Read the rest at Black Enterprise.com 

Isn’t it fitting that the one hundredth anniversary of the Girl Scouts, which is today, falls during Women’s Appreciation month? How kismet! If you were never a part of a Girl Scout Troop, do know that the organization has made significant strides throughout its 100 year history to include girls of various races and backgrounds (including disabled girls, girls with mothers in prison and most recently a transgender girl). The Girl Scouts has also sought to empower young girls to eventually become well rounded, self sufficient women. Even when the organization was started in 1912, girls around the country had the opportunity to explore arenas that had previously been “off limits” to us double X types.

Seeing that organization got it’s start at a time when our country was still largely segregated, the first Girl Scout Troops were made up of white girls only. But in 1917, five years after its inception, the first troop of African American girls was formed. From there Native American girls formed a troop in New York in 1921, Mexican-American girls formed a troop in Texas. By the 1950s, the organization made a national push to desegregate its troops, eliciting praise from Martin Luther King Jr for helping to end segregation in other organizations across the nation.

By 1975, the Girl Scouts had elected their first African American woman, Dr. Gloria D. Scott, to serve as the National President for the organization.

In honor of a great organization and its 100th anniversary, find your local girl scout and buy a box of cookies or three. You can rationalize that it’s going to a worthy cause.

Source

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Just caught wind of a huge fart cloud coming from Bob Morris, an Indiana lawmaker who insists that the Girl Scouts–yes; those evil peddlers of mint chocolate cookies–are in collusion with Planned Parenthood to promote GASP!! abortion and homosexuality and is demanding an immediate investigation.

According to the Chicago Tribune, “Morris, in his letter to lawmakers, said some Christian conservatives who share his concerns have pulled their children out of Girl Scouts. He also pointed to a Colorado Girl Scout troop’s acceptance of a transgender child last month as another reason to leave the group.”

Can you imagine? Put folks like Morris in charge, and they’ll be raiding weekly merit badge meetings, and bringing in the SWAT team. They’ll enlist a special scientific panel to test girl scout cookies for birth control pills ground into flour and mixed inside. What’s next? Mandatory hymen checking, dudes?

For the life of me, I CAN NOT understand why Republicans are so obsessed with this, especially in a time when people care about whether or not they can pay their cable so that they can maintain the little sliver of joy they get watching Spartacus and Shameless.

This, combined with last week’s statement from a Rick Santorum supporter, who suggested women hold aspirin between their knees as a form of birth control is just beyond the Stone Ages. Leave these people in charge and we’ll all be wearing burqas soon.

Planned Parenthood rep, Betty Cockrum says that “On the national level, inflammatory and generally inaccurate claims about a partnership between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood have been promoted primarily by anti-choice lawmakers seeking to place pressure on organizations to disassociate or distance themselves from Planned Parenthood.”

Anyone else sniff a conspiracy? First the Susan G. Komen Foundation disaster, and NOW the Girl Scouts? Geez…this is getting CRAY CRAY for real.

*clears throat and puts on airs*

As the founder and organizer of No Wedding No Womb, an initiative to raise awareness and find solutions to the 73% out-of-wedlock rate in the African American community, I want you to know I am not some raving lunatic who advocates abortion as a form of birth control. But I’ll support an individual’s right to chose–to a point. As a mom of a two premature children, there’s no way I’m with late-term abortion, except in the case where the pregnancy is life-threatening to the mother or the child is so developmentally and physically handicapped that life would be a horrendous hardship for both parents and child.

That’s my position, and I’m sticking to it. I’m not all rah-rah for everything Planned Parenthood does, but it’s the best and most comprehensive organization we have. What  I am totally against is Girl Scouts wearing little green burqas whilst selling Thin Mints in front of Whole Foods.

Christelyn D. Karazin is the co-author of “Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race, Culture and Creed” (to be released May 2012), and runs a blog, www.beyondblackwhite.com, dedicated to women of color who are interested and or involved in interracial and intercultural relationships. She is also the founder and organizer of “No Wedding, No Womb,” an initiative to find solutions to the 72 percent out-of-wedlock rate in the black community.

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Meet Laurel J. Richie, President of the Women’s National Basketball Association. Smart, independent and professional, this top level exec of the WNBA is poised to take the organization to the next level. A marketing exec prior to joining the WNBA, Richie is excited about her new role and is dedicated to encouraging women and girls through her position. Successful, optimistic and charismatic, find out why she’s the boss.

In a passionate YouTube video that’s now been made private, a California teenager is attempting to spark a nationwide boycott of Girl Scout cookies as a result of the organization allowing a 7-year-old transgender child to join a Colorado troop this past fall.

The girl, identified as Taylor, claims to have been a Girl Scout for eight years and says her organization is using proceeds from sales of the cookies to “[promote] the desires of a small handful of people,” saying:

“Right now, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A…is not being honest with us girls, its troops, its leaders, its parents or the American public. Girl Scouts describes itself as an all-girl experience. With that label, families trust that the girls will be in an environment that is not only nurturing and sensitive to girls’ needs, but also safe for girls. I am asking you to take action with me and boycott Girl Scout Cookies.”

Considering Taylor’s message has now been blocked, I’m assuming the head Girl Scout troopers got to her, but it’s interesting that she can be silenced all while the organization refuses to allow the concerns of the LGBTQ community to go unheard. Many people were extremely upset when transgender child Bobby Montoya was admitted to a Colorado troop last year, prompting the resignation of three Scout leaders in Louisiana who also dissolved their troops. But in a statement released by the Girl Scouts of Colorado through the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation they wrote, “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

What do you think about Taylor’s call for a national boycott of Girl Scout cookies? Do you agree with the organization’s policy to permit transgender girls to join?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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If you are a Girl Scout Cookie lover, you will be excited to know that this year marks their 100^th anniversary and they are celebrating by introducing a new lemon flavored cookie called – Savannah Smiles. The new name is in honor of the organization’s founder Juliette Gordon Low, who heralds from the Georgian City (Savannah). While the other half of the name reflects the cookie’s half-moon shape, which is meant to represent a lemon wedge and “Brownie Smile”. Learn more about here…

Who is placing their order ASAP?

 

 

by Charing Ball

I have a seven-year old nephew, who does really oddball things at times.

Don’t get me wrong, he is a smart kid with lots of imagination but he definitely has a penchant for marching to the beat of his own drum.  Like one time, my brothers, his kids and I went to see the new Transformers 2 (this was some time ago). We were piled in the car, heading to the IMAX Theater when I noticed that my nephew had on a blue and yellow Sponge Bob Squarepants mitten. Just one mitten, in the middle of August, while wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Now, no one around me seemed to notice this. So to ensure that I wasn’t the crazy one, I asked him, “dude, why do you have on a mitten?” In typical fashion, he smiled sheepishly, shrugged and said, “I dunno know. I just like it.”  So I asked his dad, my brother, who rolled his eyes in the back in his head like he’s been down this road before. He said, “Look, he had this glove on for three weeks now. He refuses to take it off; he even sleeps with it on. I asked him, he doesn’t know why – or at least he doesn’t tell me. I just let him wear it. It’s makes him happy.”  Fair enough.

I thought about my nephew and more specifically, my brother’s response last week when I watched a news report, via YouTube about the seven year old kid in Denver, who prefers to dress like a girl and is joining the girl scouts. Yeah, I’ll give you a few seconds to comprehend that one. Okay, got it? Good, let’s move on.

The kid,, says he likes “girl stuff” including wearing wigs and dresses and playing with dolls.  Recently, his older sister joined the Girl Scouts and being a boy that likes “girl stuff,” Bobby decided that he wanted to join too. But when Bobby’s mother took her son to register, a troop leader told her, according to published reports, “It doesn’t matter how he looks, he has boy parts, he can’t be in the Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts don’t allow that [and] I don’t want to be in trouble by parents or my supervisor.”

When the Girl Scouts of Colorado heard that a local troop leader had denied Bobby, they released a statement saying that “Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization and we accept all girls in Kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

Well that story seemed to have a happy ending, but does it? If it was up to me, I would like to see an end to the silly gender specific boy/girl scouts organization in favor of a single “The Scouts.” As a child, the boy scouts always seemed cooler and much more fun than the girl scouts anyway.  They went hiking, camping and made fires and stuff. Whereas my ghetto girl scout troupe hawked cookies all the time. Why would Bobby want to join the Girls Scouts is beyond me.  Nevertheless, despite being accepted into Girl Scout organization, some folks still believe that even if Bobby thinks of himself as a girl, his family treats him like a girl; he’s still not a girl.  Therefore what the parents, and the Girl Scout organization, are doing is aiding in the confusion of a child. In short,  there’s something about seeing a boy in a dress that really freaks people out.

But of course, this is not the first example of how trans-gender exploration at young ages has levied similar charges.  Last year, one mother’s decision to allow her 5-year-old son to dress up as a female cartoon character for a preschool Halloween party spawned a mini-controversy in the blogosphere about if that was an acceptable parenting decision. And by now, we are all familiar with My Princess Boy, a book by Cheryl Kilodavis about her 5-year-old son Dyson’s love of pink, dolls and sparkly dresses. That book, as well as Cheryl’s decision to allow Dyson to appear on various talk shows in a dress led to a lot of outrage and condemnation from adults, who felt that Cheryl was exploiting her child’s confusion for financial gain. But lots of parents are grabbling with what to do when children, specifically boy children who want to do things outside the normal scope of what is considered “boy stuff.”

It’s weird how girl children have the whole range of gender expression open to them. They are free to climb trees and be fairies; go fishing and have tea parties, play football and play Barbies, and at worse we call them tomboys. But let a boy child want to dance ballet or play Barbies or even exhibit qualities typically associated with girls including sensitivity, crying and gentleness, than the entire world is ready to call him gay and suggest “corrective” action before the behavior before “it gets out of hand.”

It seems totally unfair to boy children to only exist under this narrow set of options of manhood.  And it speaks volumes of our own issues with homosexuality, particularly in men. What does it say that fears of homosexuality take precedence over the mental well being of the boy child himself?  The truth is, he may grow up to be gay or he may not, but pretending to be Wonder Woman or Ariel from the Little Mermaid every once in a while isn’t going to “make” him anything other than the creative and playful child he obviously already is.

I’m not trying to totally dismiss a parents’ anxieties, as there are some justifiable concerns, particularly the social pressure of fitting in. And even if you’re open-minded about your son’s choice of toys or dress-up clothes, we can’t simple ignore the reaction from family, friends and even complete strangers, who might be less than understanding, if not downright dangerous.  If safety is the concern than it might make sense to limit his imagination time to places and environments where it is safe to do so. However, the fact that your son enjoys playing with “girl” things or has qualities we typically associate with girls, should not be seen as failure to instill some archaic notion of masculinity on him but rather a power implication of the good job you, as a parent, has done to allow your child to embrace his feminine side.  After all, in our essence of being, we are all composed of feminine and masculine energy.  And in no way, especially in a society where hyper-masculinity has contributed to so much violence and pent up aggression, should we continue to deny our sons the opportunity to explore all sides of themselves. When all is said and done, we are trying to create well-balanced people.  And isn’t it important that we allow our children to do, in the words of my brother, what makes them happy?

 

Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.

 

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