Be Our Guest: a Networking Event Supporting Girls Garage

Welcome to our Be Our Guest series, a networking series that supports local organizations in need. Our hope is we can form deeper connections with you all, while raising funds or collecting goods for these well-deserving organizations. 

Girls Garage is a nonprofit design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youth ages 9-18. We provide free and low-cost programs in carpentry, welding, architecture, engineering, and activist art to a diverse community of 300 students per year. Integrating technical skills, unconditional support, and community leadership, our programs equip youth with the personal power and literal power tools to build the world they want to see. In our 3,600-square-foot workshop in Berkeley and under the guidance of our highly skilled all-female and nonbinary instructors, we invite students to bring their creative voice and put technical skills to work on real-world building projects that live in our community.

To date, participants have built 171 projects ranging from furniture for a domestic abuse shelter to a greenhouse for a community garden and fruit stand for an organization serving refugee families. All teen participants attend the program at no cost to their families. 82% of our teenage students identify as youth of color, and 56% of students attend Girls Garage for 3 or more years.