Hundreds of girls attended a recent Girls Spark empowerment summit at Penn State Brandywine in Media, writes Hadas Kuznits for KYW Newsradio.

The summit was created five years ago by Julia Kasper, a high school junior at the time. That first year about 100 girls showed up.

This year’s summit signed up 135 middle school girls and 115 high school girls.

“In 2018, when I was struggling with my mental health and I was struggling with anxiety, I was looking for a place to go that wasn’t a group therapy that would help me build a supportive community of women, but also learn from them,” Kasper said.

The Girls Spark summit this year had speaker sessions and workshops that looked at mental health, self-confidence, financial literacy, healthy relationships, body issues, and more.

College strategist Linda Hollenback was one of the speakers. She compared a path to success to the updated directions a GPS will give you when you make a wrong turn.

“It doesn’t say you can’t get to your destination. It says, ‘Recalculating,’ and that’s the way life is,” she said

Sofia Bass, 15, said the program helped her meet new people but also emphasized skills like communication and organization “that you take with you later in life.”

Read more about the summit at KYW Newsradio.

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