Many girls of all ages struggle with insecurities at some point in their lives. Usually these insecurities start at a very young age and become more prominent in junior high and high school.

To combat these thoughts of self-doubt in young girls in our community Lake Ridge senior Taylor Teague set up a chapter for “I Am That Girl”.

“From personal experience, just walking through stuff in my life and it’s really needed in our community,” Teague said, when describing why she decided to create the chapter.

“I Am That Girl” is a national nonprofit organization that promotes girls all over the nation to be comfortable in their skin. Their vision is to help females transform their self doubt into self love and to encourage girls to treat themselves and each other better.

“A lot of girls feel like they need to attack each other when they should do the opposite. So I felt like that it would be a good opportunity to bring that into the community,”  said member Kayla Marie, junior.

Anyone can join the organization by creating a chapter, or group, on the “I Am That Girl” website for their own region and follow the topics that the organization has for each meeting.  After creation, people from that area can join the chapter.

“It’s been a really good experience. I’ve really enjoyed it, I definitely feel that it’s a place where you can just come and just talk about things,” Marie said.

The meetings are a safe haven for girls to express how they feel on certain self-topics and build each other up. Nothing is said in the meetings are talked about else where, whatever is said in the group stays in the group.

Right now Teague’s chapter has a total of 30 members and she is looking to partner with elementary schools to include young girls in this self building opportunity.

“We went through a lot of bumps to get it going, but we definitely have our feet off the ground now,” Teague said.

The girls have had their first two meetings so far and other girls are welcome to join in anytime.