Girls Rock Camp By Jen Pontrelli
In a society saturated with pop culture
fixtures like the Kardashians and a myriad of starved-for-attention Hollywood starlets, today’s female youth can face quite the conundrum when looking for influence and inspiration. Girls Rock! Chicago is a local branch of an organization that is looking to help young girls see past these flimsy icons by empowering them through music. Within the duration of two one-week sessions, the Girls Rock organization hosts Chicago-area girls, aged 8 to 16, and teach them how to play instruments, form a rock band and write a song. Throughout the week, the girls participate in various workshops including music lessons as well as other, non-musical activities. At the end of the weeklong session, the girls cap off their journey by performing at a Chicago venue that
some adult local artists could only dream of and recording a song in a real music studio. Through this process, Girls Rock is becoming an organization that is making a huge difference in the lives of local young women by bringing out their inner rebel yell. The Girls Rock organization was originally founded in 2001, by a student of Portland State University who wanted to run a summer day camp centered on music. The concept was popular with Portland female youth and within just a few years, the camp gained immense popularity and took off around the country with locations opening up in New York and eventually Chicago. In 2005, Melissa Oglesby and a friend, who had been involved with an early New York-based camp, decided to get young Chicago-area girls rocking by bringing the camp to the area. The girls worked together to curate instruments and