{"id":2023,"date":"2025-06-02T16:17:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T16:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/?p=2023"},"modified":"2025-06-02T16:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T16:18:07","slug":"mom-to-mom-south-florida-organization-provides-support-education-to-empower-young-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/mom-to-mom-south-florida-organization-provides-support-education-to-empower-young-women","title":{"rendered":"Mom to Mom: South Florida organization provides support, education to empower young women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. <\/strong>\u2013 On this week\u2019s Mom to Mom, Local 10\u2019s Nicole Perez sat down with a young woman who received support and guidance from a South Florida organization meant to help empower girls and prepare them for the work force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Savannah has big dreams of becoming an esthetician one day and own her own business. She said the goal is to help others, knowing it is exactly what she needed just a few years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI kind of wanted to share a light, because I was in a really dark place and able to make my way out of it with the help of Pace,\u201d said Savannah Powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pace Center for Girls in Broward County<\/a> is an organization that provides counseling, therapy and education for girls ages 12 to 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is located in Wilton Manors, Florida, is part of a statewide network of 21 centers dedicated to transforming the lives of girls through education, counseling, and life skills development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief program officer for the organization, Angie Pappas says the focus at Pace is for the girls to complete middle to high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll have girls who are just failing out of school and just not feeling like they belong. They may have experience bullying. They may have experience trouble at home. We also have girls who have begun to get involved in behaviors that have caused them to run away. They\u2019ve been involved with the juvenile justice system,\u201d said Pappas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every course and standardized test the girls take within the program is part of the Broward County Public School district curriculum. Upon graduation, the girls will receive their high school diploma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo really if you\u2019re a girl who\u2019s struggling in school, you feel like no one\u2019s listening to you, you feel like you have no voice, you feel like things are just not going the way you want them to be, and you\u2019re struggling you can call us and we will figure out how to help,\u201d said Pappas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the case for Savannah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy first week here was kind of an adjustment. But, once I like kind of got my way around and stuff things went for the most part smoothly, I would say hands down the staff is everything that like kept me through it,\u201d said Savannah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Savannah, her mother, Shannon Powers, and Nicole sat down to have a conversation about her time with the organization and why their family chose to make the switch from attending her high school, to transferring to the Pace Center for Girls Broward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have more individual care rather than like back in public school everyone\u2019s just teaching everyone the same thing. There\u2019s no really getting to know each person individually,\u201d said Savannah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its founding in 1992, Pace Broward<\/a> has served girls across the county, offering academic programs aligned with the local school district to help them stay on track and recover credits if needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be too difficult for Savannah to open up to Nicole when they sat down earlier this month, so her mother stepped in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe had a rough freshman year with some domestic violence. We had to get the police involved. The self-medicating started, the not doing well in school started and the roller coaster just was going down rapidly, and we were at our wits end,\u201d said Shannon Powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shannon said she and her husband did whatever they could to help their daughter get out of the dark place she was in. That\u2019s when they found the Pace Center for Girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During her time at Pace, Savannah successfully completed all of her junior and senior year requirements, ultimately graduation early. She as chosen as the student speaker at her graduation and their annual luncheon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Savannah tells Nicole she is now in a healthy relationship. The organization is free to students and families, but they do rely on donations from the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pace Center for Girls Broward is launching the Healthy Girls Challenge <\/a>to help girls in the South Florida community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donations can be made online by clicking on this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Watch News Story<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. \u2013 On this week\u2019s Mom to Mom, Local 10\u2019s Nicole Perez sat down with a young woman who received support and guidance from a South Florida organization meant to help empower girls and prepare them for the work force. Savannah has big dreams of becoming an esthetician one day and own her own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"52","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"post_tag":[58],"class_list":["post-2023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-pace-broward"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023","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=2023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2027,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions\/2027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pacecenter.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_tag?post=2023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}