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Preparing a Garden:
Hardy Girls Healthy Women (HGHW) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the health and well being of girls and women. Our vision is that all girls and women experience equality, independence, and safety in their everyday lives. To that end, our mission is to create opportunities, develop programs, and provide services that empower them. Since day one, Hardy Girls programming, resources and services have been powered by the latest research in girls' development. Much of that research comes from the work of Hardy Girls co-creator and board member, Read Lyn Mikel Brown’s keynote address Cultivating Hardiness Zones for Adolescent Girls. (PDF: 86k)

Although many, if not most, national programs designed to support girls in the past 15 years have focused on self-esteem and other internal, psychological issues, HGHW is one of the few programs that addresses girls'lives in relational and social contexts. We believe that it is not the girls, but rather the culture in which they live that is in need of repair. The developmental psychology concept of "hardiness" shifts attention from the individual to their environment-families, schools, and community organizations- as the key agents of change in girls' lives.

Our goal is to connect girls to these environments, while transforming their surroundings into safer havens. By providing parents, teachers, and community members with as many possible resources and skills available to us, we first raise awareness about their capacity to serve as agents of change, and then enlist their action.

We see girls not as the sum of any particular pathology (self-cutting, disordered eating, drug use) or struggle (body image, self-esteem, early sexual activity), but as whole beings living within and affected by a variety of social systems. With increased control in their lives, greater challenge from adults, and closer commitment to their communities, girls will and do thrive. We are connecting with the field of positive youth development that envisions individuals as potential change agents within their schools and communities.

Overall, the purpose of our work is to create a more equitable culture that meets the different needs of girls and boys. We do so by engaging and educating our communities and by empowering youth with new opportunities for control, commitment, and challenge in their lives. To that end, we encourage all youth to continue the ultimate struggle to create healthier societies in a world in which we all are valued for who we are and what we contribute.

Listen to Lyn Mikel Brown and Megan Williams talk about Hardy Girls Healthy Women on State of the State (a Maine radio show!) from June 19th, 2007. (Scroll down in the archives to the day of the interview.)

In her own words, read what Waterville High School senior, Kerri Knights, had to say about Hardy Girls in her speech at the Maine Women's Fund's annual dinner.

"I was asked to tell you all my dreams. At first I was scared, for you more than me, because I thought I was suppose to just give you my opinion about certain topics, but my goals, my dreams this is what I should tell you about. About how I want to get accepted to Green Mountain College to study Business and music, to become an intern at Green Mountain Coffee and maybe run the place someday, that in a nutshell is my goal. I could stand here and tell you I want to be the president of the United States some day! Don't get me wrong I know I could do it if I put my all into it but I'll leave that challenge to the woman who does dream to conquer the patriarchal government.

I want to take you through my dream, it's a jungle, greenish and healthy, kind of, but it's loud, boy is it loud, Males everywhere shouting at me to be something I'm not, how I need to look, how to act. I thank the goddesses for Girls scouts! My troop receives an invitation to go to a Girls Unlimited Conference- Put on by this non-profit organization called Hardy Girls Healthy Women. An organization that soon enough would be a part of me. I go to this conference, a warm fuzzy part of the jungle. The first thing I see but a quote from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: "Well behaved women rarely make history" I loved it, the rest of my day filled with learning many things, Colby college ladies showing me what Barbie would really be like if she was real (on all fours). Letting me know that the jungle magazines I read is the jungle's way of brain washing.

My day turned into my years and four or five years have gone by and I am thankful to the people who gave these three women (Karen Heck, Lynn Cole and Lyn Brown) a chance to make this place what it's become. A place of great women, stories, knowledge, resources oh the resources! Hardy Girls Healthy Women made my adolescence in this Jungle no longer scary and loud. I know that this Jungle includes and belongs to women; we need to be reflected in our culture, the positive way. Hardy Girls Healthy Women has taught me how to find a haven in this Jungle, how to share this haven with others and for it to show. They have the tools, not just for what I needed but also for what women could need. Due to your generous support Hardy Girls always has and always will be a part of my dream. Thank you."

We also participate on boards and conference planning committees and as guest speakers and trainers to keep the perspective of girls’ needs in the forefront of any discussions taking place.

Lyn Mikel Brown is one of the Hardy Girls co-creators and a professor of Education and Human Development and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She writes extensively on the relational life of girls; the influences of race, class and gender on girls' lives; girls' feelings of anger, self-knowledge, loss, hope, and desire.

Lyn's acclaimed work on girls' social and psychological development has consistently broken new ground and challenged old perceptions. She is the co-author, with Carol Gilligan, of Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development (Harvard University Press, 1992), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year that helped spark an international debate about the lives of girls and redefine our understanding of female development. Dr. Brown, a founding member of the renowned Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development, has written two other acclaimed books on girls' social and psychological development. Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls' Anger (Harvard University Press, 1998) and Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls (New York University Press, 2003).

Dr. Brown, a founding member of the renowned Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development, has written three other acclaimed books on girls' social and psychological development. Raising Their Voices: The Politics of Girls' Anger (Harvard University Press, 1998), Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls (New York University Press, 2003), and Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers' Schemes (St. Martin's Press, 2006) a parenting book to protect girls from marketers and media.Dr. Brown lives in Waterville, Maine with her husband Dr. Mark Tappan and their daughter Maya.

Karen Heck, another co-creator, has extensive background in non-profit development. She was a member of the planning committee for the National Adult/Juvenile Female Offenders' Conference, a speaker at the Education Department's HIV/AIDs Conference for Peer Leaders in the fall of 2001, has facilitated the Maine girls' health project funded by the Bingham Program and currently is working to develop the Hardy Girls' model for export to other communities. Karen's non-profit background and Lyn's expertise in program development are being combined to respond to requests for assistance from across the country. Lyn and Karen are both members of the Turn Beauty Inside Out Maine steering committee and have been on the statewide advisory committee working to implement the girls' health plan developed at the Girls' Health Summit in 2001. In 2006 Karen was issued the Maine AAUW's Achievement Citation Award, the highest award for extraordinary community involvement in women's issues.

Lynn Cole, the third co-creator of Hardy Girls Healthy Women, also has extensive experience in the non-profit world in direct service, administration and fundraising. Early in her career, Lynn began working with pregnant and parenting adolescents. She chaired the committee responsible for the creation of the first school-based child care center in central Maine that continues to operate today. Her work with pregnant and parenting teens included 13 school-based groups. She has worked with single mothers in transitional housing and with Head Start parents with an emphasis on empowerment and independence.

The recipient of an AAUW Career Development Award, Lynn, in the last 10 years has worked as an executive director and a senior development officer. Throughout her career she has coached and mentored women by encouraging them to find their voices and to take charge of their lives. She brings her expertise to Hardy Girls Healthy Women as an advisor on organizational development, executive coaching and, fundraising.

A long standing comittment to the quality of lives of girls and women has been demonstrated by speaking engagements, board service, membership affiliations and volunteer activities. Lynn is a graduate of the University of Maine with a B.S. in Community Health Education and, she holds an M.S. in Communications Management from Simmons College in Boston. Lynn lives in Bristol, Maine with her husband Aaron, and is the mother of 2 adult children.

The three co-creators were named Women of the Year in 2002 Waterville Business and Professional Women's Association for their work in creating Hardy Girls Healthy Women.

The point of all of our work is to develop strong women and girls who are able to critically examine the world around them and to voice their interests and desires.

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