When Tiruwerk was seven years old, the police came to her home in Khartoum, Sudan, and took her father away. “They sent him away for two weeks and they beat him a lot of times,” she wrote in the memoir I Remember . . . published through 826Chi. “I said that I wished that I was beaten and not my lovely daddy!”
Blair Brettschneider (now the executive director) started the organization in 2011 after working with a local refugee resettlement agency and realizing that teenage girls in particular could benefit from special attention. Ever since, GirlForward has focused on providing one-on-one mentorship programs, summer camp programs to prepare the girls for the school year, and a safe-spaces program to connect the girls to their community. The group’s annual fundraiser, Girl Jam, takes place this Sunday at Firehouse Chicago (1545 W. Rosemont), to help fund these programs.
While the girls will sometimes open up about the lives they and their families escaped, they’re mostly a joyous group, laughing and dancing to Taylor Swift as often as possible. In fact many of the girls are attending the Girl Jam fundraiser to not only read their stories from the 826Chi memoir, but more importantly to dance their hearts out to the girlcentric playlist provided by DJ Greg Feelgood.
