By: Cheney Hurley –

UPDATED: Oct 2

Women’s empowerment is an issue that many activists and progressives have fought for for years. From Rosa Parks, to Malala Yousafzai, and now – Lincoln can add their very own Ina Bhoopalam, a Lincoln East High School junior – to the list of Women’s Rights heavyweights. Bhoopalam founded Girl Up Lincoln Public Schools and Like a Girl this year and currently presides over both.

“[Girl Up and Like a Girl] seek to develop and run programs that empower youth with carefully constructed, effective, and unique methods. Our goal is to create an LPS and world where all genders unite and are empowered,” said Bhoopalam.

Girl Up and Like a Girl are two different clubs and while the difference is sometimes hard to see, it is there. Like a Girl works to develop empowerment programs that are implemented in LPS elementary and middle schools. Girl Up is a United Nations foundation and therefore has a more international focus.

“Like a Girl is something I founded for elementary and middle school programs – it has more of a focus on how girls’ feel about themselves, self-esteem, destroying gender stereotypes, and gender based bullying,” said Bhoopalam. “However, we supplement the Like a Girl Empowerment Programs with some of the activities that Girl Up United Nations has created. These activities from the UN Girl Up Foundation focus on learning about issues girls’ face in developing countries and how to solve them.  Some issues that it works to bring awareness to are  access to education, access to menstrual products, sexual and physical abuse, forced labor, and child marriage in third world countries.  We like to supplement the Like a Girl programs’ curriculum with the UN Girl Up Foundation’s activities because we believe that it is important that we do not just teach youth how to have a domestic view on issues but an international view.”

Bhoopalam was bullied during her sophomore year because she wanted to be herself and in doing so she broke some of the social norms and gender stereotypes that our society still holds. She decided to take action instead of feeling sorry for herself; she wouldn’t apologize for being herself.

“It’s when I realized how lucky I was to have a strong support network to help me get through this situation and had all the resources I needed to thrive that I decided I didn’t want to wallow in self-pity and I wanted to introduce something to LPS that would help other girls learn how to deal with this situation and build confidence,” said Bhoopalam. “But also at the same time teach other genders that girls are not weak and don’t deserve to be treated less than anyone else. I did a lot of research and I came across Girl Up United Nations. I then decided I wanted to directly teach girls how to handle this situation and that’s when I came up with the idea of starting my own non-profit Like a Girl.”

The process for getting this approved was not easy. Bhoopalam had to jump through many hoops and had many questions asked, but it seems to have paid off.

“I approached a supportive teacher, [Ken] Flowerday, last year with this idea and he referred me to the District Superintendent of Secondary Education, Dr. [Patrick] Hunter-Pirtle, to help me get this project started,” said Bhoopalam.“It was hard to convince those needed at first that this was a worthy cause and this was a good way to tackle it, but I just got [it] approved this summer and we [are] now launching Like a Girl and Girl Up LPS in full-force throughout first semester this year. All my teachers and our district sponsor have been very supportive throughout the process.”

Girl Up and Like a Girl are student dominated organizations that allow high school students to take on large leadership roles to support a cause they care about and to make a difference.

“High schoolers are the driving force of this entire organization Girl Up LPS and Like a Girl. They run the entire organization, it’s completely youth run, and that’s exactly how I envisioned it be,” said Bhoopalam. “It’s a way to elevate young people’s voice in our society and show them that they are truly worth something. [Even though] the Like a Girl Empowerment Programs are for elementary and middle schoolers [they] are run completely by high school students as well.”

While high school students are leading the charge, this does not mean people of any age group cannot join. This is a cause that any and everyone can support.

“There is something for people to be involved in on the elementary and middle school level as well and if you are a parent or a teacher you may also register as one of our parent/teacher supports or even get involved in our PTO.  If you are a community member you can attend our support groups/safe spaces and attend our events that are open to the public (most of them are). For more information on this you will have to visit our website that is being released next week,” said Bhoopalam

Girl Up is completely new to Nebraska, but they already have many passionate people joining their cause, around 200 and probably more. It is not new to many other states and countries across the world, however.

“We are the first Girl Up United Nations chapter in the whole state of Nebraska. We are one of the first Girl Up Chapters/Clubs in the midwest as well. Girl Up United Nations has over a 1000 clubs and campus chapters all over the world in every continent except for Antarctica. The Like a girl organization that we are currently working on registering as a non-profit, is as of right now only in LPS. Once we register it we hope to expand as much as we can,” said Bhoopalam. “This is a club, this is a movement, this is a cause – it’s all three.”

If you would like to know more info on Girl Up LPS or Like a Girl you can contact Ina Bhoopalam via email: [email protected] and click here for the link to their website that will be up very soon.

Global 5k run at Maxey Elementary School in Spring of 2017 through the Like a Girl pilot program.

Photo Credits: Ina Bhoopalam