Every year, a group of Parker students comes together to select an organization to receive the $10,000 that goes with the Susan F. Berkowitz award. “GirlForward,” a local organization that mentors young girls through both educational and leadership opportunities, was selected. GirlForward started in 2012 with only one student, but since then has grown to serve over 100 female students every year.

Last year, the Berkowitz committee selected “The Dovetail Project,” an organization that assists young fathers in the Chicagoland area. Since then, “The Dovetail Project” has become a nationally recognized group. Sheldon Smith, the organization’s founder, has been featured on CNN and in the Chicago Tribune.

Assistant Principal Ruth Jurgensen is in her second school year overseeing the Berkowitz committee. “I was really excited about the opportunity to lead the committee,” Jurgensen said. “I was really excited to get to know Upper School students, while leading them or helping them figure out the best way to do good in the world, which is amazing.”

Each year, the Berkowitz committee selects a theme according to which it selects organizations for consideration.

“We do a few weeks of brainstorming of different issues, discussing those issues, and we sort of widdle down that list into five or so issues,” Jurgensen said. “We vote on them, we continue to talk them through, and usually through significant discussion, we get to one.”  

This year the committee’s final ideas came down to Chicago youth affected by gun violence and immigrant refugee assimilation and support. “There is an enormous amount of gun violence in this city,” Jurgensen said. “I think as residents of Chicago we know that, and at the same time we’re in this political climate.”

Sophomore Maya Plotnick, a two-year member of the Berkowitz committee was one of the members that helped decide the theme. “I think the deciding factor for deciding our final theme was, since they’re both really really important, how similar were they to last year’s theme,” Plotnick said. “We wanted to try something new and go with the refugees.”

Organizations that help young refugees, Jurgensen thought, would make more of a political statement.

The committee, with the help of Jurgensen, was able to take the time to visit the sites of the organizations that applied for the award. Visiting the sites gave members of the committee a chance to see closely how the organizations operate and work.

During the late fall, the Berkowitz committee reached out to organizations that could qualify for the award based on the selected theme. “We actually were approached by the school,” Director of Education at GirlForward, Emily Kane, said. “They told us about the theme, and the process, and the committee of the Berkowitz committee, and that’s kind of where our application process began.”

In March, seven to ten Parker students–without Jurgensen–visited GirlForward, located in Edgewater. “It was a really cool experience to meet everybody,” Temi Famodu, Director of Communications at GirlForward, said. “We were really surprised to see that there were no teachers there. It was all up to the high schoolers to make this decision.”

Onsite, Parker students were able to both conduct interviews with faculty and participate in some of the lessons with students. “Part of our mission is to advocate for refugees, obviously, but also their experience,” Kane said. “So we don’t have many opportunities where we get to live out that part of our mission, as far as advocacy goes.”

Through the site visit, Parker students were able to help achieve this part of the mission. “One of the ways that I really wanted to advocate for what it really means to be an English language learner was we had an activity where the students from Parker were not allowed to use the letter ‘H’ in any of the words they used,” Kane said. “So they had to really think about their language, and really give them that perspective of what it means when you have really limited vocabulary and what that does to your communication, and your social experience.”

According to their mission statement, “GirlForward provides adolescent refugee girls with individual mentorship, educational programs and leadership opportunities, creating a community of support that serves as a resource and empowers girls to be strong, confident, and independent.”

Currently GirlForward is the only organization in the US that focuses entirely on female refugees. GirlForward plans on using most of the $10,000 grant, towards their summer camp for these girls. The largest cost that will be covered with this money, is providing unlimited CTA passes for over 35 girls for a duration of two months. “The reality is, the Berkowitz award is getting our girls to our program, which is obviously the most important aspect,” Kane said. “We are just so hugely thankful because without this award, and without those CTA bus passes, are program would not even exist.”