Patriotic Cookies. Mom’s Perfect Pumpkin Bread. Chocolate Ovaltine Surprise. Those were some of the featured cookies at the LES Girls Club’s 2nd Annual Holiday Cookie Swap fundraiser last weekend at La Vie. For a $20 ticket, I received a big golden tin and entry into a jackpot of sugar! Cookies (homemade!) went for about $1-2 a piece, with all proceeds from the event benefiting the Club’s culinary education and job training programs.
The Girls Club was founded in 1996 to provide services for teen and pre-teen girls in the Lower East Side. Today, it offers a host of programs and opportunities for young girls, ranging from mentoring to art workshops to a fair trade girl-made gift shop!
Under the tenor of Treble, the all-girls a capella group, and with my free proseco in hand (oh dear sponsors), I nibbled my way through the crowd. The restaurant was packed with Girls Club staff, members, volunteers, supporters, judges and cookie addicts like me.
I bought my first one, a chocolate peppermint rapture from fourteen year-old Stella. She’s been a member of the Club for 3 years. Stella said she originally joined because her mom was active in the Club, but she quickly saw how much it benefited her and the community. “They help us get prom dresses!” she said excitedly, referring to the Club’s annual prom dress give-away that sees droves of girls line the street in anticipation. Her friend Chelsea beside her, member for 7 years, beamed, “I love everything about the Club!”
I wound my way through the maze of tasty tables and met Mandolin, a young woman who has been volunteering at the Club for a year. She became a volunteer, she said, because she grew up with a single mom, no siblings, and few resources, and she knew the value of having a great after school club. She likes that the Club is a place where no one judges anyone and it’s educational. Mandolin is a mentor in the monthly Culture Club Mentoring Program and meets about once a month with her mentee for social activities, from gallery tours to baking. Next month, they’ll learn how to knit.
Lisa, another mentor, was selling cookies with her mentee, Aizhanae. Lisa got involved because she lived in the neighborhood and would pass by the Club every day and grew curious about what they were doing. Aizhanae had heard about all the cool opportunities for girls her age and signed up. This was their second “date”. In fact, it was really cute, a little awkward and full of shy smiles. How was it so far, I asked. “So far, so good.”
On my third round of the room and on a sugar high, I met the founder and executive director of the LES Girls Club, Lyn Pentecost. She said that because of the changing demographics of the LES, membership was growing among young Asian girls. Looking at the crowd, too, I noticed a real cross-section of the neighborhood. Apparently, there are some 15,000 teens in low-income housing in the area.
Just a few months ago, the Club broke ground on their 12-story, 35,000 square feet building on Avenue D. The building will include a recreation center, yoga rooms, art facilities, and recording studios. Above, there will be 77 market rate and subsidized apartments. I think of my neighbor, Tom, who’s lived in the LES for twenty years and says, there was a time he wouldn’t go past Avenue B. And now, you have to dodge yoga mats.
Amidst the proseco and shiny blueprints, I thought of the enthusiasm of girls like Stella and Chelsea and Aizhanae. And I wondered how I, too, might have benefited from a girls empowerment program as a recent immigrant kid in Elmhurst or as a transplant to suburban Florida. Well, one thing was for sure. The cookies were damn good.