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Making Change

Caring for our community

The Spitfire Club

The book club empowering young girls

Above: participants in a Spitfire Club show off their books. (Photo: The Spitfire Club)

When MainStreet Bank’s Brianna Singleton, Avenu Scrum Master, was growing up, she loved to read. But the books she read rarely featured characters like her. It’s a story that many women can relate to. Now a nonprofit in Alexandria, Virginia, is working to change that.
 
The Spitfire Club is an after-school book club for girls in first through fifth grade that builds their confidence through a rich library of children’s literature highlighting diverse, powerful female characters. But it’s more than just a book club. It’s a community built around showing girls what they’re made of.
 
“We want girls to be empowered protagonists of their own life stories,” founder Amanda Hazelwood said. They host around seven Spitfire clubs at a time, reaching more than 80 girls weekly.
 
Brianna went to visit their office in Del Ray to deliver a $1,000 Making Change donation. When she found them online, she read about their mission and it just clicked.
 
“I think about all the books I was reading [as a kid]. There weren’t very many empowered female roles. There were a lot of male roles. But there wasn’t anything saying ‘I could do that, that’s me. I see myself in her,’” she said. “That’s what really drew me to Spitfire.”
 
The Spitfire Club has five key values at the heart of its curriculum: curiosity, resilience, empathy, authenticity, and tenacity. Every book they read features a strong female protagonist that embodies one or more of these values. And they have a diverse range of characters that reflect the community around them.
 
“We try very hard to make sure our books and units represent a broad spectrum of identities. Not just racial identities but also lived experience,” she said. “A girl can be anything, right? You don’t just have to want to be president to be an empowered girl.”

Left: The Spitfire’s five core values displayed on a poster in their office. Right: Amanda gets ready for a Spitfire Club session. (Photos: MainStreet Bank)

Amanda founded the Spitfire Club in 2017. She had been hearing about the lack of diversity in children’s books and started looking for organizations trying to help. She found a few that collected diverse books or raised awareness around the issue, but there was something missing.
 
“Who’s actually getting these books into kids’ hands? It wasn’t happening,” she said. So when Amanda moved to Alexandria in 2017, she decided to do something about it.
 
While working to get a gate installed at a local park, she connected with a city employee who loved her idea. The local department of Recreation, Parks & Cultural Activities was already doing some after school programming and it seemed like a natural place to get the Spitfire Club started. Amanda raised $7,000, designed a curriculum, bought a few sets of books, and started the first official Spitfire Club.
 
Seven years later, the organization has an office and two full-time staff members, and has served 450 girls.
 
A typical Spitfire Club day includes Amanda or program manager Leslie Figueroa traveling to a group of girls, reading a book together, talking about the themes in the book, and doing a craft or project related to the book. They balance fun and learning and keep kids coming back for more.
 
“The things that kids want more than anything are time with friends, unstructured time, and reasons to laugh,” she said. “It’s not too hard to build that.”

Above: Brianna presents her donation to Amanda Hazelwood. (Photo: MainStreet Bank)

But Spitfire is about more than just reading books and having fun – it’s a community where girls can be themselves and open up.
 
That positive sense of community is the Spitfire Club’s true superpower. Not only does it help girls grow up with self-confidence, but it also creates a low-pressure environment where young readers are able to strengthen their skills without fear. Amanda says that’s a huge help for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia.
 
One of Amanda’s proudest moments is when a girl came up to her after a Spitfire Club session and thanked Amanda for giving her the confidence to be able to read.
 
“You made me not scared,” she told Amanda.
 
The Spitfire Club serves many girls in the Alexandria region, especially in underserved areas. They regularly host clubs at two Title I schools and meet at a local affordable housing community. And they’re there when kids need additional support.
 
“Because the kids feel comfortable in our space in a way they don’t feel in other places, they’re coming to us with family challenges. We’re getting domestic violence reports,” Amanda said. “So now we’re going deeper with the kids we have, making sure that when they want anything from us we are able to provide it in whichever ways possible.”
 
As demand for the Spitfire Club has increased, they’ve started a new program of licensing their curriculum and offering it to schools and libraries where they can’t provide staff time. But as Spitfire grows Amanda says they’re making sure to hold it close so it stays true to its values and continues to be an inclusive community.
 
“Some kids come to us who look like they were born in a boy’s body. But if they want to be with us, they are welcome here. Anyone who wants to be here is welcome.” Amanda said. “You have to make sure that whoever is the steward of this mission is embracing that inclusivity.”
 
Donations like Brianna’s $1,000 Making Change contribution are essential to Spitfire, and help pay for supplies, rent, staff time, and, of course, books.
 
Amanda brought out a few of her favorites from the Spitfire library to show Brianna. The stories were unique and beautiful with a powerful message at the heart of each one.
 
For the kids in the Spitfire Club, these are the stories that they’ll remember when they grow up. Books full of curious, resilient, empathetic, authentic, and tenacious female characters. Books full of girls like them.

Above: Amanda reads some of her favorite books from the Spitfire library. (Photos: MainStreet Bank)

To learn more about the Spitfire Club visit thespitfireclub.org

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