Pepsi to Announce Programming All over Mary J. Blige’s Energy of a Female Competition and Summit

This Friday, Pepsi Stronger Collectively — the brand’s sequence of grassroots initiatives bringing tailored programming assistance to communities across the country — is supporting the town of Atlanta as soon as yet again.

As part of its footprint in the Mary J. Blige and Pepsi “Strength of a Female Festival and Summit,” Pepsi Stronger Collectively is empowering ladies in the neighborhood starting with City of Refuge, an group that provides providers to families and persons in crisis including housing for girls and solitary moms, youth progress and job education. Along with a clothes donation to restock the Town of Refuge’s closet for new residents, Pepsi Stronger Collectively is also offering a $20,000 donation to more assistance the significant operate the firm does in assisting women in require.

“The closet presents extra than just clothes to these women, it’s a person of their initial touchpoints when they arrive and a resource of self confidence and self-respect. We discover that when women of all ages like the apparel they are wearing they regard themselves additional and as a result demand regard from the folks in their lives,” explained Kelsi Franco, director of Women’s Housing at Town of Refuge.

“This generous assistance from Pepsi More robust Collectively will allow us to carry on aiding the women of all ages who reside right here with new clothing as properly as methods to empower them, which in transform helps them in setting up self-assurance and preparedness for the workforce and beyond.”

 As part of the Pepsi Much better Collectively donation to Metropolis of Refuge, the brand name will be delivering:

– A assortment of brand new dresses to support reinstate the donation-based mostly women’s closet that supplies absolutely free dresses every month to about 100 women of all ages in want. Providing a range of tougher to source inclusive sizing, the brand’s donation covers small business qualified apparel, athletic use and much more to support females that appear to City of Refuge with only the clothing on their backs.

– A $20,000 grant to assistance the organization’s ongoing function in the Atlanta local

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UMD alumna is first female to run youth mentorship, after-school programming foundation

By Angel Gingras
For The Diamondback

Two University of Maryland alumna are working to improve the lives of students in the Washington, D.C., area through mentorship and after-school programming at the Youth Leadership Foundation.

Janaiha Bennett is an alumna of this university and the executive director of the Youth Leadership Foundation in Washington, D.C., which provides mentoring to students from third to 12th grade who live in underrepresented communities. She is the first female to hold this position in the organization’s 24-year history.

“The relationships that are created between the students and the staff are really deep-seated … you just bond, and so it is sort of a family and a community” Bennett said. “So essentially what we do is give students the tools they need to fulfill their potential as a human being.”

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YLF is a year-round program open to students in any of the organization’s seven partner schools in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Students can take part in after-school or weekend programs during the school year or in the five-week summer camp as often as they want. This fall, the staff is running an in-person program with the option for students to attend virtually.

Bennett was first introduced to YLF when she was an undergraduate student at George Washington University. She joined other college students and began mentoring young women, working her way up through various program roles, until she became executive director in 2018.

Bennett was also at YLF when she graduated with her master’s degree in school psychology from this university in 2013, which she said contributes to the work she does at YLF.

“I learned a lot about working with individual students and how to work with teachers so that they can help students,” Bennett said. “It was a really great experience.”

Kayla Montgomery, also an alumna, began her mentorship with the organization when she was a sophomore at this university. She graduated with a degree in criminology and criminal justice in 2020.

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