Certificate in Community-Engaged Leadership
Les Femmes de Substance
Earned/re-certified Certificate in Engaged Leadership: 2019, 2020
Mission: The purpose of Les Femmes de Substance is to foster a sense of community and leadership within the Black female population on Cornell’s campus. Through educational experiences and programs, Les Femmes strives to create women of substance, who will make every effort to give back and build up their surrounding communities.
Community partner: Beautiful and Educated (BAE) at Greater Ithaca Activities Center
For our project with our partner, we … established mutually supportive relationships with high school girls from BAE and strengthened the bonds within our e-board.
It was important for us to commit to our community partner because … as women of color attending a predominately white university, we understand how important it is to create spaces where we can be our whole selves and empower each other. We wanted to extend that space to girls of color in Ithaca, as they are in a similar situation in many of their own schools.
Our community partner taught us … the power that comes with being yourself and speaking your truth.
Our group has benefited in that … we had the opportunity to share ourselves and our experiences in a safe space and impart wisdom onto local girls of color.
We’ve also learned that the community-engaged leadership program is … helpful in keeping organizations accountable for their community involvement.
With the experience, we plan to … collaborate on more events with our community partner with even more helpful workshops and (possibly) field trips, and hopefully get to meet the other BAE members that did not have the chance to attend our last event.
Certificate in Community-Engaged Leadership
Build on your interests and apply your experiences (from courses to extracurricular activities) to this program to develop the skills you need to be a community-engaged leader.