One thriving Pace girl is 16-year-old Sandra. The high school junior has been attending Pace Center for Girls of Polk County for nearly a year and has found refuge at the Center. \u201cPace has helped me a lot, just learning how to self-advocate and finding my voice,\u201d she said. \u201cI struggled a lot with my self-worth before I came here, and I can honestly say it\u2019s improved and helped me achieve a lot of my goals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The women Sandra most admires and who have supported her are her mother and her Pace Spirited Girls teacher, Michelle Taylor. \u201cShe looks after me a lot and notices when I\u2019m having a bad day,\u201d said Sandra. Asked what she liked about attending Pace, she noted, \u201cI love the environment, the people, it\u2019s open, everyone\u2019s warm. No one\u2019s shut off. You don\u2019t feel out of place. You feel like you belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once a year, Pace Polk sends two girls to Tallahassee for Pace Day at the Capitol. Sandra earned the coveted spot, an incentive for excelling socially and academically, and will be attending this year, where she\u2019ll have the opportunity to meet legislators and other Pace girls from across the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Executive Director Ellen Katzman described Sandra as sweet, articulate, compassionate, and a model student. \u201cEvery girl that comes here comes with challenges. We call them \u2018at-risk factors.\u2019 They are obstacles in the young women\u2019s lives, and they have to overcome them. [Sandra] is strong \u2013 she\u2019s resilient, and in overcoming those, she\u2019s learned to have her own voice, to advocate for herself,\u201d Katzman raved. \u201cWhen she leaves here, I have all the confidence in the world that this child is going to be an incredible young woman. She\u2019s going to make her own path, her own future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The executive director noted that she most admired Sandra’s inner strength and adoption of self-advocacy, something Pace empowers all girls to do. \u201cWhen there\u2019s someone like Sandra who grasps it so easily and well \u2013 it was there all time, we just helped bring it out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sandra, who spoke with the poise and self-assuredness of a young woman destined for success, beamed from within. In the future, she hopes to shine that light on others as a substance abuse counselor, helping people with addictions better their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thriving Pace girl is 16-year-old Sandra. The high school junior has been attending Pace Center for Girls of Polk County for nearly a year and has found refuge at the Center. \u201cPace has helped me a lot, just learning how to self-advocate and finding my voice,\u201d she said. \u201cI struggled a lot with my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"post_tag":[75],"class_list":["post-1394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-pace-polk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1398,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions\/1398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_tag?post=1394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}