International Women’s Day 2024 – WNBA and NBA Join Forces With Special Program to Empower Girls

NBA and WNBA are coming together to be involved in a decade-old partnership, serving the purpose of supporting and encouraging girls’ participation in sports. The program aims to encourage girls by removing obstacles in their way so that they can lead on their own terms.

This year, 2023 Rookie of the Year and rising WNBA star Aliyah Boston is the face of the Lean In Girls program. “We want girls to lead their own way,” Aliyah says. “That’s why the NBA and WNBA are proud to support Lean In Girls, a program that teaches girls to reject stereotypes and embrace their leadership superpowers. This is what leadership looks like.”

Pressing on the importance of this program, Aliyah says, “A program like Lean In Girls is super important because as a woman in society, it is hard to be able to feel as though it is okay for you to be confident, you to use your voice, you to have strong opinions about anything and Lean In Girls is a great way for girls to be able to build that confidence as a leader. Whether it is in the sports world or just living everyday life, and so I think it is really important from a young age because you’re able to go through this and understand that I can do what I want to do if I believe.”

Chipping her contribution towards the upliftment of young girls, WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu shares a piece of advice that goes, “to just continue to stay true to themselves, um and obviously being unapologetically themselves and whatever it is that it they want to do and I think as you continue to grow and understand who you are as a person, your voice just becomes that much more important to yourself and others that are listening.”

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More about the program

Propelling young minds to do wonders, Lean In Girls is a leadership program with an aim to help girls see themselves as leaders in a world where they are often told otherwise.

Certainly, it has never been felt more important than today to empower girls by equipping them with self-assurance, resilience, and inclusivity as everyday leaders, along with inspiring them to lead boldly.

It is a curriculum for girls and young teens identifying with their girlhood between the ages of 11 to 15. As a result, the participating girls will learn to embrace their leadership superpowers and reject the limiting stereotypes about what girls can’t do.