[ot-caption title=”Rachel Auslander has inspired many across the school to fight for gender equality” (via Sydney Aronberg, Junior)”]

Last year, current junior Rachel Auslander along with recent Class of 2016 graduates Sarah Gale and Ginger Hollander launched Pine Crest School’s first ever Gender Equality Club. Their club is a chapter of the United Nations Foundation’s campaign, Girl Up. Since the club was founded, it has started a school wide discussion on gender equality. Rachel first became involved with advocating for gender equality issues as a member of the Day of the Girl – US Action Team. After stumbling upon Girl Up online, Rachel was inspired to bring it to Pine Crest.  [spacer height=”20px”]

Rachel facilitated Pine Crest’s Day of the Girl celebration on October 11^th of this year. During the half day, instead of shortened classes, students were separated into groups and participated in a student-run workshop/discussion about various topics related to gender equality and feminism and the prevalence of gender inequality in society. There were student-led assemblies held before and after the workshops, and an excerpt from the film He Named Me Malala was shown.[spacer height=”20px”]

This did exactly what Rachel and the group strives to do since they were able to raise awareness and spur discussion about the issue. Rachel hopes to continue Day of the Girl at PC for many more years to come and said, “The only way to create change is to talk about the issues. It was very progressive to have an entire half-day in order to engage the entire student body.” [spacer height=”20px”]

Rachel is now also the president of the Gender Equality club. The club both advocates for and raises money for girls’ education in developing countries and holds frequent meetings where members discuss issues pertaining to these projects and other items related to gender equality. [spacer height=”20px”]

Rachel not only works toward gender equality in school, but she is also a passionate advocate outside of school. She is the director of the South Florida Girl Up Coalition, and she founded CoderGals, an organization where high school girls teach elementary school girls how to code through free after school programs. She attended the 2016 Girl Up Leadership Summit in Washington D.C. and was selected to be a Teen Advisor for Girl Up for 2016-2017. She was chosen from a pool of many applicants along with twenty other girls from around the world. [spacer height=”20px”]

Rachel is already doing so much for the fight for gender equality, but she doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.  After high school, she plans to strive to do more, including utilizing her interest in STEM to advance gender equality. She said, “After high school, I will continue to advocate for gender equality because progress will still need to be made. I won’t stop until the problems are solved, because the issues are so much larger than myself. My activism alone is not enough, which is why I will continue to encourage others to speak up about the issues. What is incredible about being a part of a campaign like Girl Up is that you’re able to interact with so many other girls who are just as passionate as you, which gives you hope for the future.” She hopes to use her interest in science and technology to solve inequalities in the future. [spacer height=”20px”]