DOWAGIAC — Kaitlyn Blackmon glided up the rockwall at Southwestern Michigan College as a group of 21 girls and six female law enforcement mentors cheered her on.

On Monday and Tuesday, The Michigan State Youth Leadership Program hosted an overnight stay at SMC’s Dowagiac campus, so teenage girls could continue to build positive relationships with law enforcement mentors.

Last year, these same teens graduated from the Michigan Youth Leadership Academy, after spending five days at the Michigan State Police Training Academy in Lansing. This year, Melinda Logan, the program coordinator and the Michigan State Police Niles Post assistant commander, reached out to SMC, hoping to have the girls experience life on a college campus. SMC accepted and helped plan the programming, which included workshops on filling out college and trade school applications, and interviewing practice.

The program, which is funded through the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistant Grant Program, usually goes to Benton Harbor, where all boys are selected, Logan said. Last year, she was given the opportunity to receive the grant and expanded the program to teens from more than one community. She asked if she could do an all-girls program and have it be for Berrien and Cass County teens.

“I wanted to actually break down the walls of stigma between the different communities and have girls learn to build relationships outside of their own communities,” Logan said. “Many of the girls continue to stay in contact with each other. It has really brought them together strongly as a team.”

In a short five days, Logan and other female mentors, who are all in law enforcement, between the Michigan State Police, Berrien and Cass County Sheriff’s offices, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, noticed an extreme amount of growth in the group of girls.

“All of us just loved the girls so much from last year,” Logan said. “We started getting the group together and said, ‘We really need to have something else for the girls.’ They are girls that have some form of financial need. Typically, they are families that usually don’t leave their communities very often, and the kids don’t have a lot of opportunities.”

In 2018, Logan recruited the teens with the help of local school districts in Berrien and Cass counties. Several homeschooled teens were selected as well. The girls selected did not have to have any interest in law enforcement.

This year, those same girls returned for a second year. Most will be first-time college students, so the experience can be overwhelming, Logan said.

“The focus this year is to really give them a tour, have them spend the night at a college,” Logan said.  “Then, they can see college really isn’t as scary as they’ve had in their minds. This really gives them an experience most of their parents can’t explain to them either.”

The participants’ parents were invited to learn how to complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians also presented to the group to give them a multicultural experience. As the night rolled around, the teens gathered to watch, “Wonder Woman,” which was selected by the group as an empowering movie, Logan said. 

A keynote speaker from last year will select a girl to receive a $1,000 scholarship, after she processes questionnaires the young women responded to. Tina Johnson, another mentor who spoke to the group last year, gave everyone a presentation on life skills. To end an activity packed few days, the group went to Rum Village in South Bend to do a high ropes obstacle course.

“It’s another chance for them to get pushed out of their comfort zones and to get over their fears,” Logan said.

Despite the young women starting out as strangers last year, they now have new friends and mentors through the experience.

“I like everything, meeting new people and the mentors,” Blackmon said. “It gives us new opportunities. We are on a college campus right now, filling out applications.”

For Gabby Inman, another program attendee, she said she learned valuable leadership skills from the program.

“I definitely love the leadership part of it, and getting to work with people from different communities,” Inman said. “The mentors have encouraged me to do things that I never pictured myself doing. We just learn to adapt to different situations and circumstances.”

Before the girls left, they were each given their own laptop to keep to be used for continuing to fill out applications. The 22 donated laptops from Lakeshore High School were just one example of the many donations the program received from Berrien and Cass County residents, Logan said.

“Anytime I’ve asked anybody, they want to help bring these young ladies forward, and give them something they’ve never been able to do before,” she said. “We hope this will continue to propel them towards some type of schooling or career.”