Opportunities for leadership development, career exploration, community service and women’s empowerment may be hard to find for a seventh-grader, but not with the help of the G.I.R.LS Power program.

G.I.R.LS, or Genuinely Intelligent Rambunctious Leaders, was created in 1997. The program is a mentoring program and a mentoring club, said Judy Dolphin, executive director for the YWCA Ames-ISU office.

Dolphin said the YWCA pairs each of 15 seventh-grade girls with a woman in college to mentor them throughout the year. The mentors and mentees meet twice per month as a group. The mentors also meet separately with their mentees throughout the month.

“[The program] is a great way for the girls to become more confident by seeing how much we have accomplished when we were in their place just a few years ago,” said a former mentor Katie Drake, junior in journalism and mass communication.

Dolphin said the group gets together and plans their own schedule for the year in five major areas of development: leadership, social events, community service, fund raising and career exploration.

The girls become more open and willing to participate in leadership opportunities, said Laura Amaya, whose 12-year-old daughter, Jessica, participated in the program.

Amaya said the program and normal seventh-grade development had “a lot to do with [Jessica’s] change, but watching ISU student role models helped her to feel more comfortable.”

Dolphin said leadership development is included in every area rather than being a separate emphasis.

Leslie Tarkowski, junior in pre-business and former mentor, participated in a walk for cancer with her mentee.

Jessica, Tarkowski’s mentee, said community service creates a “great feeling to know that you’re giving back to the community.”

For fund raising, the group learned how to write a grant to pay for their end-of-the-year program, Dolphin said.

A panel of career women came in to answer questions for the girls during a monthly meeting, she said.

Mentors also talk about career exploration with their mentees.

“Sometimes they don’t know what they want to be . and I’ll tell them it’s OK to not know,” Tarkowski said.

When the girls aren’t doing things with the group, they meet on their own time.

“[My mentee] just wanted someone to hang out with,” Drake said. “One time we did yoga. We watched movies and went to a basketball game.”

Mentors don’t have to be authority figures for the girls.

“[My mentor] was fun to be around and we had a lot of things in common,” Jessica said. “She was just a really good friend.”

The end of September will mark the beginning of the fifth year of the G.I.R.LS Power program, which still needs mentors.

“We’re always looking for a diverse background of girls,” Dolphin said.

Women interested in applying to be mentors can inquire at the YWCA, 15 Alumni Hall. Training begins Sept. 22.