Empowering Women: Freshman Halima Talbi has volunteered for nonprofits for women since seventh grade through junior board and continues to grow her passion for it

After spending nearly two years staring at her teachers through a computer screen, Freshman Halima Talbi returned to middle school and wanted to get involved with something new.

She already played volleyball and was in Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge — a program for gifted students—but she wanted an extracurricular that would help give back to her community.

“I just wanted to have more activities in my life because at the time I mostly had sports,” Halima said. “I wanted to get involved in more community focused things.”

She continued the Junior Board program at East — a SHARE project where students research local nonprofits to pitch presentations for grant money.

“Even before I started doing Junior Board, I volunteered a lot at places like Red Cross and homeless shelters but after Junior Board, I’m constantly volunteering and am constantly involved,” Halima said.

Now, she balances being a Junior Board team captain with debate, forensics, track and the Multicultural Student Union. This year her team is researching and working with the United Women’s Empowerment — an organization that aims to improve women’s potential in leadership roles through research, policy solutions and civic engagement.

One of Halima’s main goals is to support nonprofits that deal with empowering women, as well as organizations that are not often seen in Junior Board.

“I think what I really want to do is not focus on groups that everyone else is doing,” Halima said. “It’s always the same kind of groups that get funding, even if it’s mental health or handicapped [services] — [topics] that people don’t usually do, things that don’t get as much awareness.”

Halima recruited some friends to be on her team, including freshman Katharine Sally. Sally  is in charge of communicating with officials from the company and helping with research.

“This is my first year and I  joined because of Halima,” Sally said. “She really liked it, and I thought it was really cool and it could be an exciting thing to do.”

Freshman Tori Roland was also recruited and is in charge of the financial part of the presentation.

“We collaborate really well and we’re not afraid to share our opinions on how things are displayed or how we think they should be displayed,” Roland said. “We have kind of a core set of people that work on the presentation, work on the digital design part of it and make it look good. It’s all pretty balanced.”

Despite the workload, Halima tries to be positive and have a good time with her friends while still helping lead the research presentation with her group.

“I’m really close with the first years in my group so it’s more of just helping a friend with homework,” Halima said. “I’ve definitely taught them how to structure it. There’s a big difference between business slideshows and school slideshows.”

One of her favorite memories was from eighth grade when she did a site visit to Amethyst Place, a housing program for women and children recovering from poverty.

“We visited the housing that they had set up, and you got to talk to the kids on the playground,” Halima said. “It was just really memorable because of the way they talked about their mothers.”

The girls plan to continue researching nonprofits uplifting women in future years through Junior Board.

“It definitely allows you to realize what you have and then also realize that you need to be able to help others who don’t have as much,” Halima said.