Motivate, Empower, Educate
Our Founder
Meet Dr. Verna Cornelia Price, who founded Girls Taking Action and co-founded The Power of People Leadership Institute in 2007 with her husband, Brother Shane Price.
To learn more about Dr. Verna and her amazing accomplishments, you can check out her personal website here:
Dr. Verna Cornelia Price
“Powerful people are knowledgeable, informed, and educated people”
Our Mission
Our mission is to motivate, empower and educate girls about the importance of understanding their personal power, achieving academically, actualizing their personal leadership, creating positive social change in their local community, and developing a career plan that includes post-secondary education.
The numbers speak for themselves!
As of today, GTA has impacted over 3,000 middle school and high school girls throughout Minnesota, Michigan, and Georgia as well as Guatemala, Kenya and Liberia. Over the years, GTA has raised over $1 million dollars to support the program and empower girls around the world. Girls in our program are twice as likely to attend post-secondary education with 95% graduating from high school on time and 75% attending college.
Our Story
With the rise in violent, destructive, and delinquent behavior being exhibited by the female students at Minneapolis’ North High School, Dr. Verna Cornelia Price was concerned the rise in this negative behavior was affecting their futures.
Girls Taking Action was founded with the help from Achieve! Minneapolis’ Career Center Initiative, a grant from The Minneapolis Foundation, and continues to thrive through grants, individual donors and our corporate sponsors: Medtronic, 3M, Bremer Bank, Aveda, Office Centers, Marsden Holdings, Ecolab, Medtronic, and Wells Fargo.
The project resulted in a dramatic 50% decrease in school violence, 75% decrease in suspensions, and delinquent behavior and a significant increase in academic engagement in girls participating in program.
Girls Taking Action (GTA) enables girls to know, understand, and bring out their personal power. We teach them how to use a critical thinking process, setting them up with the tools to embrace success in school and life.
In GTA, we want to develop strong leadership qualities in our girls. They learn how to become positive leaders in their school and local community through ownership of ideas and community service-learning projects.
We empower girls to take an active role in designing their own futures. GTA helps them identify and participate in activities that support their growth.
GTA organizes field trips to colleges, cultural, and community events that inspire greatness in our girls. Throughout the year, they also meet with career-driven women leaders who share their stories and engage in conversation.
The GTA girls are plugged into weekly mentoring meetings packed with tools and resources to help them succeed in their current situation, and plan for a successful future. We feel strongly that working in tandem with local school districts helps our girls feel supported both by our organization, and by their own educational institutions.
See What Our Girls Have to Say!
“Encouraged me to be a leader and not a follower”
“Helped me accomplish my goal to finish high school and apply for college”
“Let me know there are things I can do in the community to help out”
“Taught me to never give up on my dreams and always believe in myself”
