If the Atlanta-based organization Cool Girls prides itself on helping young girls prosper into confident and educated woman, no one better than Executive Director Tanya Egins seems to fit the mission.
Having joined the organization as a volunteer more than 20 years ago, she credits the organization with allowing her to “grow up” and evolve.
“It’s been the longest thing that I’ve ever done in my life, including being married, and being a mom,” Egins said.
She also noted that her experience is similar to many of the young women that she has seen come out of the program.
“Everyone that comes through the doors of Cool Girls leaves a little more empowered, a little more inspired, a little more motivated,” she said.
Egins currently runs its day-to-day operations, and she’s held her current position nearly 10 years. Cool Girls itself originated in 1988 when Dawn Smith, then a law clerk, attended a neighborhood meeting in The East Lake Meadows, “a housing project in a very dangerous part of Atlanta,” said Smith in a 2017 Georgia State University profile.
“I met 25 girls at the community center who lived there,” she said in the profile. “Together we decided to form a club, which they named Cool Girls.”
With the help of her friends, coworkers and community members, Smith was able to build the organization into a hub for mentorship, education and cultural outings.
Now, 35 years later, the organization has gone from serving 25 girls to more than 350 across eight schools in the metro Atlanta area, six in DeKalb County and two in Fulton County that meet weekly with their students.
The girls involved range from elementary to high school aged girls, with the latter holding their own weekly meetings at the Cool Girls headquarters.
Through modules and open discussions, the organization is able to address a number of issues facing young women in their school and home lives, with a concentration on five competencies of social and emotional learning — self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making.
“The interesting thing is that our topics pretty much stay the same, but they become age-appropriate,” noted Egins. “When we’re talking about healthy relationships with our elementary or younger participants, we set the scenario up for what their every day may look like.”
“Everyone that comes through the doors of Cool Girls leaves a little more empowered, a little more inspired, a little more motivated.”
Tanya Egins, executive director of Cool Girls
For instance, she said, Cool Girls help young girls create healthy relationships and develop conflict resolution skills with friends in classrooms and neighborhoods. Then, in middle school, the girls encounter those situations more often and are able to rely on the skills they’ve built.
The organization also adjusts its curriculum to fit the interests of the young women attending the program, with art and technology being the two biggest loves of her students.
Another aspect of the program that Egins enjoys just as much as her students are the field trips throughout metro Atlanta, which happen monthly. And some of the trips are not just confined to The Peach State.
In July, high school aged members of the group took a trip to Washington in which they were able to visit historical sites throughout the city, as well as partake in a meet and greet sessions with U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia.
These experiences altogether have helped cultivate a thriving environment for the young women in her program, a majority of whom are Black and brown.
“There is no better feeling than to be able to create a safe space for our girls who have been told that they are not enough or that they are not beautiful, that their hair is a conflict,” Egins said. “There is no better space than creating space where they know that they are enough … it’s indescribable. It’s the most rewarding feeling ever.”
And while the organization may continue to evolve in the future, Egins knows that the definition of a “Cool Girl” will always stay the same.
“She is confident, she is strong and is OK in those moments when she is not strong,” she said. “She is secure and she knows that she can put her mind to anything that she wants to do, because Cool Girls indeed become cool women.”
