Emma Mayerson and Alliance for Girls Achieve Success

Alliance for Girls launched on May 30, 2012. A program of the Eva Leah Gunther Foundation, Alliance for Girls seeks to bring together girl-serving organizations in the Bay Area to promote the betterment of girls’ lives through access to resources, legislation, and effective grass roots organizing. Program Director Emma Mayerson has been with Alliance for Girls since the beginning, and over the past few months, has seen the organization grow in terms of member organizations and the number of girls reached.

Emma Mayerson has been working with community building organizations throughout the Bay Area for many years, and was an obvious choice for Program Director on the basis of her experience. Under Emma Mayerson’s guidance, the Alliance for Girls has started an extremely popular lunch series that provides networking, leadership, and learning opportunities for member organizations, as well as interested non-members. In addition, Emma Mayerson has created a detailed community calendar and listserv that keeps member organizations informed about events within the girl-serving world, as well as a web-based directory of services and member organizations.

Since Alliance for Girls launched in May, the organization has seen a huge increase in community interest. Beginning with just 6 member organizations, membership has grown to a full forty organizations, most of which devote at least 25% of their activities towards the betterment of girls’ lives. Emma Mayerson has done much of the outreach work that has secured the participation of these members.

Alliance for Girls was recently asked to present at the West Coast Children’s Center’s conference on human sex trafficking, and has recently partnered with local organizations ranging from health services groups to recreational centers. Emma Mayerson continues to develop new and exciting programming for the Alliance for Girls, and the organization has continued to grow in the months since its founding.

Why Empowering Girls Is Important: Emma Mayerson Speaks Out

Emma Mayerson is the Program Director of Alliance for Girls. This Bay Area program, a subset of the Eva Gunther Foundation, seeks to improve the lives of girls by combining the voices of multiple local groups into one powerful lobbying force, and by providing a resource base for local girls as well as the organizations that serve them. But what is the importance of empowering girls and providing them with opportunities?

Emma Mayerson says that supporting girls increases the welfare of an entire society. By empowering girls, societies gain the unique and powerful voices of confident women. Through empowerment, girls can become social leaders, increase their aspirations, and reduce social costs related to poor health, drug use, and unintended pregnancy. And empowering girls isn’t just about social costs - it’s also about improving individual lives. When girls have access to education, health care, and supportive environments, they are happier, healthier, and more fulfilled.

That’s why Emma Mayerson has joined Alliance for Girls as Program Director, in an effort to make resources regarding girl-serving organizations more accessible to both girls and organizers. As a staff member of Alliance for Girls, Emma Mayerson participates in the pursuit of important goals of increasing communication and collaboration between organizations. Emma Mayerson also brings multiple kinds of groups together to offer literacy skills, job training, legal services, health care, and recreation to the girls and young women of the Bay Area. Emma Mayerson also helps women become leaders, and lobbies for legislation on behalf of girls and girl-serving organization, including equal rights bills and health care coverage bills, as well as reproductive rights legislation. Through her work as Program Director, Emma Mayerson makes information regarding all of these initiatives available to all, strengthening the activist community and providing a solid basis for growth.

Social Justice is What It’s About for Emma Mayerson

As a teenager, Emma Mayerson volunteered with her local temple to teach bar and bat mitzvah students about the importance of tzedakah. In Judaism, the concept of tzedakah refers to righteousness or charity. Unlike the secular concept of philanthropy, tzedakah is not an option or voluntary, but is rather required by all members of the Jewish community, regardless of their means. Now, as a twenty-something activist, Emma Mayerson calls on the same ideas in her pursuit of social justice through a variety of means.

For Emma Mayerson, social justice and community buildings were never an option for her, but rather the right thing to do. For that reason, she began donating her time to the Jewish Coalition for Literacy of San Francisco while she was in junior high school, tutoring younger students and starting programs that helped increase literacy while building connections between elders and youth in the Jewish community. Inspired by her family of activists and her grandparents’ foundation to further social justice around the world, Emma Mayerson embarked on a lifelong pursuit of making the world a better place.

Emma Mayerson has received much recognition for her service, including a Youth Leadership Award from the Youth Leadership Institute in San Francisco and induction into the Honos Civicus society, but maintains that personal growth and gain are only an added bonus of her community service. Refusing to choose just one issue to campaign form, Emma Mayerson has successfully lead and participated in initiatives ranging from labor rights to literacy to gender equality to bridging gaps within communities. Currently, she is the Program Director of the Alliance for Girls, a Bay Area based organization that is invested in building a coalition of local groups to improve the lives of girls and help them grow into successful, strong, and empowered women.

Emma Mayerson’s Alliance for Girls Lunch Series is a Great Way to Network

Program Director Emma Mayerson has put together an extensive series of monthly lunch lectures and workshops through Bay Area group Alliance for Girls. Open to members for free and non-members for a small fee, these lunch series provide a space for members of local non-profits to learn about effective organizing, and come together to exchange ideas on improving the lives of girls in the Bay Area.

Topics for the lunch series are chosen by program director Emma Mayerson, who has exhibited an understanding of the many issues affecting girl-supporting non-profits through her selection of multiple speakers from all different backgrounds. Two past events include “Speed Networking with Alliance for Girls,” held through the San Francisco Public Library, and “Conversation with Pamela David about Collaboration,” put on with the cooperation and assistance of the Women’s Foundation of California.

Emma Mayerson has recently announced the upcoming lunch series workshops and lectures, which draw on the experience of organizers, consultants, and various professionals to talk about ongoing issues in organizing to improve girls’ lives. In November, attendees will have the opportunity to learn about issues in campaigning for funding for girls’ programming. Girls Incorporated will deliver a lecture on local campaigning. Emma Mayerson chose a workshop on creating Infographics for December, where attendees can learn how to make their organization stand out using snappy imaging and charts to convey information. In January, Emma Mayerson called on past boss Judy Patrick of the Women’s’ Foundation of California, as well as Lateefah Simon of the Rosenberg Foundation, to talk about building sisterhood among organizations and fighting feelings of isolation and burnout in activist spaces. In February, Dana Sheanin will discuss focusing on long-term goals while fulfilling short-term needs at non-profits. Emma Mayerson has put together a program of events that will appeal to members from all types of organizations.

Emma Mayerson is Involved in the Jewish Community

Alliance for Girls Program Director Emma Mayerson got her start organizing within the Jewish community of the Bay Area. Coming from a family with deep Jewish roots and devotion to community service, Emma Mayerson has been involved in relationship building and activism from within Jewish organizations since she was a young teenager.

Emma Mayerson first got involved with activism as a volunteer for the Jewish Coalition for Literacy of San Francisco, where she created the Generations program as a way to promote literacy while also building relationships between Jewish youth and elders. Emma Mayerson was also a Development Assistant at the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. She worked as a community organizing resident with Bend the Arc, which used to be called The Jewish Funds for Justice, and has been on the Bend the Arc board for seven years. She is also a Bend the Arc Jeremiah fellow. Emma Mayerson is currently a board member of the Impact Grants Initiative board of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, Marin, and Sonoma Counties.

In addition to her Jewish activist work, Emma Mayerson has also been involved in the religious instruction side of Jewish life. As a high school student, Emma Mayerson volunteered as a teaching assistant for the Seventh Grade Fund through Temple Isaiah. She also participated in the instruction of bar and bat mitzvah students, focusing on the importance of tzedakah, a Jewish concept meaning righteousness or charity that is considered obligatory for true participation in Jewish life.

Emma Mayerson comes from a long line of family members involved in both the Jewish community and larger community service. Her grandparents, Manuel and Rhoda, founded the Mayerson Family Foundations, which invest in Jewish community building, inclusion of people with disabilities, and social justice work around the world through grant funding and social programming.