Cool Girls 2009 will be held on Saturday July 25 at St. Peter and St. Paul.  More than 150 girls will shop and dance and sing and go home with backpacks full of clothes, toiletries and school supplies for the new year.   Volunteers are needed to help make this a wonderful day for the girls

Key dates:  Cool Girls planning meetings are May 13 and June 18 at 7:30pm in Room 1.   Adopt a Cool Girl Sundays are June 14, 21 and 28th.   Then teens and adults are needed to help set up the shopping area from July 20-24 in the parish hall.

Cool Girls is a non-profit organization which is breaking the cycle and beating the odds of inner city girls by offering the gift of friendship, the hope of a better life, and the tools to make dreams come true.

Cool Girls, Inc. serves girls in the East Lake and West End communities of Atlanta with after-school programs. Founded in 1989 in the East Lake Meadows Housing Project which was known for its high crime rate and related problems, Cool Girls was created by community volunteers who identified the need for girls to learn life skills, pregnancy prevention, conflict resolution, and wellness.

Today, Cool Girls not only provides an after-school club with structured modules including entrepreneurship, drama, and self-defense but also a tutoring program and one-to-one mentoring. Cool Girls provides the tools to help girls make positive choices to achieve academic success and break the cycle of teen pregnancy and poverty.

The Cool Girls program works. The Dekalb County Teen Pregnancy Task Force noted a two-thirds drop in pregnancy and significant increase in graduation rates among girls from the East Lake Meadows area.

Each year, in support of this group, St. Peter & St. Paul provides an annual shopping day. On this day, our Parish Hall becomes a mini-mall for the girls to come and "shop" for back-to-school clothes, bookbags, school supplies, and other personal necessities. Only those girls who have actively participated in the Cool Girls program throughout the school year can attend.

For more information, contact Diane Drews at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   or call 770.518.0235.