When Vancouver native and Whistler part-timer Alexa Bailey first started Girls to the Power of Math (G^M), her only goal was to help a small group of young girls in her hometown of Vancouver gain a newfound confidence in math that they would be able to take with them throughout the rest of their academic lives.
Now a few years since its inception, and G^M is a registered non-profit organization, which has successfully expanded to Whistler, where, last month, it wrapped up its 10-week program.
“We had our closing ceremony, our final day at the end of April. I know the girls enjoyed it and the mentors did as well. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there for it, but the mentors have told me that everybody had smiles on their faces,” said Bailey.
“I have pictures where they are all there with their medals and they said all the girls had a lot of fun throughout the program, and we got some really great feedback from one of the parents.”
Among that feedback, one parent reached out to Bailey to say her daughter’s “confidence in math was very, very low before your sessions, but now she says math is one of her favourite things in the world,” Bailey said.
In addition to the satisfaction Bailey gets from helping these young girls gain confidence in math, her work developing and implementing the program was also a key factor in her becoming one of the 36 winners—out of 5,000 applicants across the country—of the annual Loran Award.
Loran awards are given out annually to as many as 36 high school students who display “integrity, courage, compassion, grit and a high level of personal autonomy,” according to the award’s website.
“They look for people who have given back to their community and I’ve done that with G^M,” Bailey said.
“In addition to providing financial support for university, [the award] also includes some really unique points, including mentorship, which is so valuable to me. I’ve had experience with that and it also is one of the key aspects to G^M, which I find is so fitting and is why I love the Loran award.”
Bailey, who spent her gap year volunteering with the Whistler Adaptive Sports Program as a community coach, has finally made a decision on her post-secondary career and will be attending McGill University for biological engineering in the fall.
Although she is going to be across the country for most of the year and not as involved in the program as she was this year, Bailey still hopes to see G^M continue growing and reaching as many different schools as possible.
“I do think there will be challenges being that I won’t be in B.C., but that’s why I’m really glad that I have a great team of volunteers who make up our steering committee and our board. We want to grow our programs, so we are always looking for people to join in on any leadership opportunities whether that be a mentor running the program or more behind-the-scenes things,” said Bailey.
“Our model for sustainability is to get an elementary school involved and then the nearest high school involved and create a partnership between them so the high school is always supplying mentors and the elementary school is supplying space and participants. While I do expect there will be more expansion, I also want to make sure we are keeping the schools we have on, and I’m really interested to continue the program in Whistler because I know that both the participants and the mentors found it really valuable.”
For anyone looking to bring the program to their kid’s school, Bailey suggests talking to the school’s principal about the benefits of the program or contacting the organization at [email protected] for assistance in getting it up and running.
