Episode 72: Oasis For Girls

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Oasis For Girls Rise - Rise, Create and Envision Programs

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“I think just due to pervasive sexism, racism, classism in our society, the needs of under-resourced women of color are often overlooked”- Anu Menon

In this episode our featured voice is the Executive Director of Oasis for Girls Anu, Menon.

A poll from C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital shows that one in three teen girls and one in five teen boys have experienced new or worsening anxiety from the pandemic. The poll shows that 46 percent of parents say their teen has shown signs of new or worsening mental health conditions since the beginning of the pandemic in march of 2020.

Given the backdrop of Covid-19’s impact on our mental health and especially the health of our youth and teenagers we wanted to share the wonderful work of Oasis for Girls

Anu Menon

Anu joined Oasis in September 2019 as Executive Director. With a broad background in fundraising, operations, law, policy, strategic partnerships and government relations, Anu is uniquely qualified to lead Oasis. Anu’s prior leadership roles include: Associate Director of the City and County of San Francisco’s Department on the Status of Women, where she developed internationally recognized human rights programs; educational strategy and operations at De Marillac Academy, a school in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco serving low income students, and at Presidio Knolls School, a startup Mandarin immersion school in SOMA; Community Engagement and Development Director at Help a Mother Out, which provides diapers to low-income families, where she developed strategic fundraising initiatives and cultivated donor relationships while working closely with 30 non-profit and governmental agencies in five Bay Area counties to provide over one million diapers annually to their low-income clients. Anu is a graduate of Stanford University, earned her MA from Johns Hopkins University and JD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Oasis For Girls

Oasis was founded in 1999 to address the unique needs of low income young women of color in San Francisco, where resources for vulnerable girls are dwindling. Our mission is to partner with young women of color from under-resourced communities in San Francisco, to help them cultivate the skills, knowledge, and confidence to discover their dreams and build strong futures. Oasis programs are modeled on youth development research proving girls explore diverse areas of interest, stay engaged with academic and career opportunities, and better achieve their goals when involved in multifaceted programming in a safe, culturally-relevant, girl-focused setting. Our core programmatic array, the Springboard Series, serves 150 girls annually and empowers girls to develop confidence, self-advocacy, and self-care tools for healthy growth; understand social justice issues and advocate for change in their communities; and pave paths to successful academic and career goals.

Donation/Volunteer

While Oasis receives partial funding from government, community, and corporate partners, we rely heavily on individual donors to make up a significant portion of our budget each year. This funding is essential to ensure we can continue to offer our programming to girls while meeting their ongoing needs and helping them grow!
The number one way you can support Oasis is through your donations - a great way to increase the impact of your donation is through corporate matching. Many companies financially match donations their employees make to nonprofit organizations. We encourage you to check to see if they offer this program. Oasis for Girls is a registered 501c3 (under our fiscal sponsor the Tides Center) and qualifies for most matching programs. We encourage giving though our donation portal but also accept checks. Checks can be made out to “Oasis for Girls, a project of the Tides Center” and sent to 1091 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103. Our tax id number is 94-3213100.

Volunteering: Throughout the year, Oasis for Girls has numerous opportunities for community members to engage and promote Oasis’s mission. We are currently actively recruiting Advisory Board Members - go here if you are interested!

Videos

To find out more about Oasis for Girls check out our videos:

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“Our secret sauce is that our programs are really modeled on youth development, best practices that show that girls really thrive when they have multifaceted programming that is safe. It’s in a safe environment, culturally relevant, and girl-focused with strong adult allies”

— Anu Menon,Executive Director,Oasis For Girls

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