Putri Cahyudi

Over the summer, I was honored to join Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment’s (WISE) team as a Chuck Green Fellow. WISE is a nonprofit organization based in St. Paul that works to support immigrant and refugee girls and youth on the feminine gender spectrum in leadership and education. For girls in secondary school, they offer support with academics and college applications. Moreover, WISE’s work continues beyond secondary school with programming that supports immigrant and refugee college students with scholarships, academic support, and so on.

My role was predominantly in the Girls Getting in Leadership team, the summer after-school program hosted at three schools in St. Paul. While the GGAL program focuses on academic support during the school year, the summer program focuses more on self-development and creativity. GGAL collaborates with local artists to lead activities and lessons to create a space where students can gain leadership, creative, and artistic skills. I was delighted to be able to lead a session on self-expression through creative writing at Humboldt High School and Washington Technology Magnet School to a total of around fifteen youths who were participating in the program. The goal for these sessions was to provide the time and space for participating youth to become more comfortable with sharing and experimenting with their writing. Aside from GGAL, I also co-led the Youth Summitt Committee, a planning committee consisting of 10 immigrant and refugee youth in seventh grade and above. This part of my summer was an exciting opportunity for me to get to know the youth, work closely with them, and also lead them through designing their summit that will take place in November. I think that it’s important to learn the issues that affect them, and what they want to share with the rest of the world through this summit. Lastly, some time of my summer was dedicated to working with the marketing and fundraising team. I had the opportunity to learn a lot about the behind-the-scenes operations of the organization including social media, communications, and fundraising strategies.

I am grateful to have worked with an amazing team that was supportive of me. My time at WISE has been incredibly valuable and meaningful and I am looking forward to taking the lessons I have learned from this summer as I move forward.