Kayla Smith, Flavia Miranda, Adrienne DePina, India Santiago, Sabine Charles, Anitra Alves, Alianah Grajales, Sofia Dias, Diana Jesus, Rylee Nogueira, Natasha Ferro and Martha Kay. (Not in order)
Two amazing women; Natasha Ferro and Martha Kay have been mentoring groups of middle school girls, after school, since 2012 at the Normandin Middle School.
“The Sorority” morphed into a Youth Philanthropy Group this year and with the guidance of Natasha and Martha their young women focused on issues that concerned them. In the beginning of the school year, they brainstormed a list of needs within our community and settled on animal abuse, domestic violence, gang activity, and homelessness.
This week they made a presentation to the Greater New Bedford Homeless Providers Network. Their speech was inspiring as was their work. Their speech defines the work they’ve done, please read it.
Sorority photo archives – here
Donating thank you bags with food and toys that they collected at the school for the Humane Society
We asked Mentor Natasha Ferro for an overview – Natasha had this to say – “I’ve attached the speech to the email. The cool thing is the girls wrote the speech together on the white board and then read it together at the event. I think the speech pretty much summarizes the “what and why” except another part of that is that they created thank you bags with food and toys that they collected at the school for the humane society. I can send you some pictures from that too! I think the idea is we wanted to incorporate the GiftsToGive mission of philanthropy and caring for the community and empowering these young women to know they have gifts to give. Martha and my goals for the group is to incorporate learning through service. Learning things such as team work, improving self esteem, working hard, and caring about others, and making a difference. It has been a pleasure working with the group this year! I am so impressed with the support we have received from the city and Normandin this year as well.