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What is Hardy Girls Healthy Women?

HGHW is a non-profit that’s dedicated to creating strong and healthy girls by developing safe places to explore life and push the limits. We provide girls and women with opportunities to develop the strength we all need to bloom and grow.

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What does “hardy” mean?

Hardy refers to the ability to stay strong in stressful circumstances. Hardy girls draw their strength from supportive relationships and communities that care about them.

Hardy is an alternative to the word “resilient,” which focuses primarily on an individual who somehow magically defies the odds, perhaps with the help of one caring adult. HGHW believes that it takes many educated and caring adults to create hardy girls, that it takes a village to raise a child.

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What are hardiness zones?

Plants survive within a broad range of temperatures. They thrive within a more narrow range of temperatures. It’s the same with people. Hardiness zones are those places where the right temperature, soil, water, light and nutrients (in other words, a supportive and nurturing environment of individuals and the community) exist for girls to thrive.

Hardiness zones:

• Provide opportunities for girls to experience control, commitment and challenge--control over their lives, commitment to others and their community, and opportunities to challenge the limits and try new things.
• Are safe spaces where a girl can be critical of a culture that doesn’t always value her for who she is or assumes only certain roles for who she can be -- where she can ask questions, challenge the usual order of things, be heard and be taken seriously.
• Support and appreciate the whole girl, not just the parts that are suffering, in need of help or are blooming.
• Are places where adults take responsibility for doing what they can to change the community, culture and environment to make it a better place for girls.

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What might hardiness zones look like?

Any space that is supportive of girls’/women’s needs and healthy development can be a hardiness zone. For example:

Small or large groups of girls and women that come together to talk and support one another, do something to benefit/challenge themselves or other girls, and/or educate the community about the needs of girls. For example, our annual Girls Unlimited! Conference and Hardy Girl Saturdays.

A program or community space in which girls’ needs and health are central, or in which participants are educated about the negative effects of cultural stereotypes, media images, and/or practices that harm girls psychologically, emotionally, spiritually or physically. For example, our Hardy Girls film series and the Maine Girls’ Health Summit.

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How is HGHW working to build hardiness zones?

In lots of different ways, through:

• Programming—creating new opportunities for girls, such as GU!.
• Coalition-building with other local organizations and non-profits, such as Communities for Children, the Peace in Our Communities Task Force, the Maine Women’s Health Campaign, the local AAUW chapter and others.
• Educating the community so that girls’ developmental needs are represented and on the radar screens of local and statewide initiatives, such as The Girls’ Health Initiative.

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How are we different from other organizations that support girls?

We focus on the community to educate and create possibilities for girls. Our goal is to make central Maine a healthy place for girls.

We don’t see girls as the problem or see our job as improving or fixing girls. Many programs are aimed at raising their self-esteem, getting them off drugs, etc. Instead, we believe that challenging girls to move beyond what they thought was possible, giving them opportunities to control their lives, to be creative and bold will have an effect on all aspects of their lives.

In other words, we are not focused on a single issue; we are not interested in reducing a girl to the sum of her problems. Rather, we see and imagine the best girls can be and we create fun and challenging spaces for them to realize their strengths and talents.

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Our Mission:
To create opportunities, develop programs and provide services that empower girls and women.