Frequently Asked Questions
What is the mission of EHF? What do you do?
Our mission at Empower HerFuture is simple: to inspire women from a young age to recognize the value in their individual and unique voices through skill-based learning. For more details, see Our Mission tab.
At Empower HerFuture, we facilitate free skills-based workshops on topics such as leadership and public speaking to aid young women in gaining not only confidence, but valuable skills that are translatable to success in the classroom, and later on, in internships and jobs.
How was EHF started?
Empower HerFuture was founded in 2016 by two college-aged women attending Scripps College in Los Angeles. When attending an all-women’s college, the dichotomy between their experience in all-women’s classroom, versus their previous educational backgrounds in co-ed, public school, became clear: for the first time, they felt comfortable and empowered to speak up and clearly express their views and opinions in the classroom, which translated to more confidence in job interviews, internship experiences and in their own personal lives.
Through this, they recognized a problem: the lack of skills based learning designed for girls in schools and a lack of accessibility for programs that did exist. In their educations, there were no spaces or specific curriculum that addressed important topics such as public speaking or leadership (at least not without a hefty price tag); it was only until they experienced a space where, for the first time, they felt empowered to speak up for themselves that they began to develop as leaders. As a result, they went on to develop several free, skill-based workshops, designed for young women, aimed to develop important leadership and confidence skills to propel them to achieve in the classroom and workforce later on. Keeping all of their workshops free became a cornerstone of their mission as such existing programs were not accessible to all women. And so, Empower HerFuture was born. For a full history, see Our Mission tab.
What is the Public Speaking workshop? and How long is it?
HerFuture Public Speaking specifically emphasizes the importance of public speaking for young women. We believe that, before all else, it is vital to analyze why public speaking is such a nerve-racking fear for so many people. The fact that women face different challenges than men when it comes to public speaking is rarely addressed. While exploring this idea, we will analyze how women and men are taught to behave differently in social settings, especially when it comes to body language. With this information, we can begin to change the ingrained ways we are taught to make our bodies small, and develop confidence to combat the fear of public speaking. During this workshop we will also break down what qualifies a good speech and how to implement these characteristics into our own public speaking practices. Finally, we will put these skills into practice through different public speaking exercises. This workshop is generally one hour long, but all timing of our workshops are flexible for your particular needs.
Overall, all of our workshops aim to be as engaging as possible. Lectures are boring-our goal is not to be just another lecture; we bring interactive learning to each workshop, allowing participants to get up and moving, while building practical skills.
Learn more our Public Speaking workshop and our other workshop offerings in the Workshops tab.
What materials do you need? and What is your typical class size?
We provide our own materials, we just need a projector and sound to show our powerpoint, which incorporates a short video! We are very flexible in terms of class size. We generally prefer 20-30, as the workshops are highly interactive and we’d like to be able to focus person to person, but we have also worked with larger groups of over 60 and the workshops are a huge success!
Learn more our Public Speaking workshop and our other workshop offerings in the Workshops tab.
Do you just facilitate one workshop? Do you offer others?
Yes! We offer three comprehensive, free, skills-based workshops. Our introductory workshop, Empower HerFuture focuses on key ideas such as pre-professional skills and confidence building. Our other two workshops, Public Speaking, as detailed above, and Networking, focus on tackling the fear of public speaking, and learning networking skills. Overall, Empower HerFuture workshops are free, engaging and aim to develop skills that can be translated into the classroom and in internships and jobs!
Although we offer three workshops, our most popular workshop is our Public Speaking workshop, as this skill is so difficult for many people, yet so important! Overall, we can accommodate the needs of your school and curriculum and are happy to work wth you to design specific programming to fit your needs. Learn more about all of our offerings in our Workshops tab.
Can I see a sample of your curriculum?
We are happy to share a sample of our curriculum with you, please email empowerherfuture@gmail.com!
How much do you charge for your workshops?
ALL of our programming is FREE. This is a cornerstone of our mission in order to be as accessible as possible, and to reach every girl we can!
What is the Mentor Program?
The mentor program was founded as a way to spread our mission to as many women as possible and to include as many voices and experiences as we can! As an LA-based organization, we quickly realized that in order to bring our promise to fruition, we would need help. Thus, only a few short months after having launched and facilitated workshops in the LA-area, the co-founders developed and launched this program, where college-aged women from across the United States are trained to facilitate workshops in their local communities.
Currently, we have over 7 mentors in 4 different states but are rapidly expanding! We want to hear your unique ideas and experiences to make our organization the best it can be.
As a HerFuture Mentor, you will be trained to facilitate our most popular workshop, Public Speaking. After becoming familiar with our curriculum and mission, you will conduct outreach to local high schools and middle school in efforts to set up at least one Public Speaking workshop per semester and even an event at your school to spread the word! Check out The Team page to learn more about our awesome mentors.
Why should I become a HerFuture Mentor? and What do we look for in mentors and How do i become one?
As a mentor, not only you get to participate in a community of extremely passionate, hard-working women who have dedicated their time to a cause that is all-important, but you get to build your resume while doing so. We want this experience for our mentors to be gratifying in many ways, and as we are all managing busy lives, we know that helping you create and execute deliverables to build up your resume is key. By conducting outreach, facilitating workshops, hosting events, and working in a start-up environment, you will gain valuable leadership, presentation and communication skills, and have fun doing it!
Our ideal mentor is a someone who, first and foremost, identifies with our mission. If you are a leader in your given community, who enjoys public speaking and is service-driven, then you will fit right in. Our team is full of out spoken and bold women who are passionate about our cause to help every woman develop the confidence to speak up for themselves, and lead others in doing so! We look for applicants who are very motivated and able to take on projects and fulfill our mentor goals, outlined in the “What is the mentor program?” section.
Right now, our mentors focus on Public Speaking skills, but we are always open to new workshop ideas if you have a specific skill you’d like to share or you think people would benefit from. We want to know what your ideal mentorship role would look like, let us know!
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BECOMING A MENTOR, PLEASE EMAIL US A RESUME AND A BIO DETAILING WHO YOU ARE AND WHY YOU ARE INTERESTED TO EMPOWERHERFUTURE@GMAIL.COM
What is the ambassadors Program? How does it differ from the mentor program?
As an ambassador, you will familiarize yourself with who we are and what we do, becoming an Empower HerFuture expert. You will then provide us with critical feedback on our curriculum and mission, so we can make sure our content speaks to you and your needs directly. In addition, you will also help bolster our social media strategy: this would mean sharing and re-posting our content, helping us create content, and of course, giving us feedback on what you'd like to see more of. We would also love to have you help create connections with our organization and your school, so we can facilitate (virtual for now) workshops to your classmates!
The program is aimed towards girls in high-school, whereas the mentor program is for college-aged students who facilitate the workshops in their areas.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BECOMING AN AMBASSADOR, PLEASE EMAIL US A BIO DETAILING WHO YOU ARE AND WHY YOU ARE INTERESTED TO IEMPOWERHERFUTURE@GMAIL.COM