About YWLP

Founded in 1997, the Young Women Leaders Program (YWLP) is a psychoeducational mentoring program that empowers middle school girls to be leaders by combining the benefits of one-on-one mentoring with targeted group activities for a year. During the year, each middle-school girl is paired with a college woman—her “Big Sister”—with whom she meets twice weekly to address issues related to girls’ sense of self, scholastic achievement, body image, social aggression, and healthy decision-making. Each Big and Little Sister pair also meets individually for an additional hour each week to develop their personal relationship. YWLP is a research-based program that has been implemented at several other colleges and universities and been shown to positively affect both the middle school girls’ and the college women’s sense of self.

Since the program’s inception, 969 undergraduate women, 55 graduate women, and 944 middle school girls have participated. The YWLP curriculum was developed and based on research in interdisciplinary areas by faculty members and graduate students from the Curry School of Education and the Women’s Center at the University of Virginia.