Today we’d like to introduce you to Ebony Gamble-Brown.
Ebony, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My story started long before I even realized that it started! When I graduated high school and was preparing to attend Kent State University, I knew that I wanted a career where I could “Change the World”. Although it would take me years to figure out what exactly that meant I knew that I wanted to be in some sort of helping profession. I started out interning and then eventually worked for a domestic violence safe house in Portage County, Ohio and while working there, I would listen to the women and children’s stories without judgement and just be a shoulder that they could lean on as they processed what they had been through and the courage that they had to leave their situation. I soon realized that I wanted to do more that I wanted to help shape the future. After graduation, I moved from Ohio and came to Atlanta.
I started off in an Americorps program that placed me at a school in the Old 4th Ward named John Hope Elementary. I was tasked with finding partnerships and engaging volunteers with the students at the school. During my first year at the school, I created over eight partnerships and had volunteers and mentors helping students with reading and math daily. I eventually got hired by school and worked tirelessly to ensure that our students had what they needed through the different partnerships, doing reading inventions and managing volunteer groups. One of my favorite moments was when each year Howard University would send a group of about 100 students who come for Alternative Spring Break and they would spend the week tutoring the students. It was amazing to see how much the students enjoyed working with the college students. Even though I enjoyed working at the school, I still wanted to do more to help students get to college and continue to engage with the community.
In 2010, the school I worked for was selected to start an afterschool club with an organization named Cool Girls. I was hired as a site coordinator at our site and each week we would teach girls in grades 2nd-5th life-skills lessons on topics such as Personal Empowerment, Conflict Resolution, Social Media Responsibility and Puberty. I loved working with the girls and in 2012, I left APS and started as a manager of volunteer services for Cool Girls. I was finally in a place where I could combine my passion for helping the community and working more personally with students. Cool Girls is a non-profit that is dedicated to the self-empowerment of girls and inspires girls to change their world.
Since being at Cool Girls, I have had the privilege of managing our volunteer department and have since become a director of volunteer services. A part of my role is to ensure that each one of our programs has volunteers to interact with the girls. Volunteers serve as chaperones on field trips, assist us with workshops and shopping days for the girls. They assist our site coordinators with facilitating the life skills lessons in the elementary and middle schools that we serve. In addition to managing the day to day volunteers, I also manage our Cool Scholars program which is for our high school girls. We meet each month and a group of volunteers and I create programming to prepare the girls for life after high school. So, we are discussing topics such as resume writing, interviewing skills, the college admission process, understanding financial aid, how to choose a college and major and so much more.
Each year the girls have an opportunity to go on a 3-4 day extreme college tour where we are taking girls to places like New York to tour Columbia and NYU, Ohio to tour Ohio State and Kent State Universities. We are providing them with opportunities to job shadow at major companies and small businesses within the city of Atlanta. Then to top it off when they graduate and if they choose to attend college, we are able to provide them with scholarships that they are able to apply for each year they are in undergrad. Through Cool Girls the girls are able to have support from 2nd grade to womanhood 100% free of charge. With the knowledge that I have been able to obtain while working at Cool Girls, I have been able to translate that into my personal life and have had the opportunity through my church to go to Uganda and teach some of the same lessons that we teach at Cool Girls to girls at an orphanage in Kamuli, Uganda. To me that is changing the world even if it is for one of the amazing girls that we get an opportunity to work with.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I am extremely blessed and have had help and support along the way. There is so much I see that I want the girls we work with to experience. However, in the non-profit world funding is limited. Although we provide great quality programming with a small staff there is so much more that we would love to do.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I work for a small non-profit named Cool Girls; I am the director of volunteer services. We provide girls with life-skills lessons beginning in 2nd grade- womanhood. I am proud of the fact that Cool Girls which was started in 1989, in the East Lake Meadows Housing Complex has grown and now serves over 350 girls each year and since 1989 we have served over 6,000 pf Atlanta’s girls. The thing that sets us apart is that we are 100% free of charge to the girls, their families and schools that we serve. When a girl joins Cool Girls in 2nd grade and stays involved in the program she has an opportunity to receive over 146,000 hours of afterschool programming, exposure to 25 college/universities both local and out of state, 20 cultural, educational and career-based field trips, three year one to one mentoring relationship with a caring adult and they can receive up to $20,000 in college scholarship money.
What were you like growing up?
I was an extrovert and loved being involved in activities. I always was joining a club, a programming, signing up to be on a committee. I always loved helping others. My interest as a child was reading, traveling and video production.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1382 Peachtree St.
Suite 100
Atlanta, GA 30309 - Website: www.thecoolgirls.org
- Phone: 404-420-4362
- Email: e.brown@thecoolgirls.org
- Instagram: coolgirlsinc
- Facebook: cool girls, inc
- Twitter: coolgirlsinc
- Other: Cool Girls
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