The Girls of Promise® 2023 Conference will be a one-day event on Friday, April 7, 2023 with an optional virtual kickoff the night before. The final schedule will be announced soon here! 

The Girls of Promise® 2023 Conference will be a one-day event at the Arkansas 4-H Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Below is the full address. 

1 Four H Way, Little Rock, AR 72223

Girls will attend breakout sessions with amazing women working in STEAM fields, including hands-on activities. All materials required for activities will be mailed to girls prior to the conference. Participants will be put into teams to meet other like-minded girls. During team time, girls will get a chance to take a break from their screen and have uninterrupted conversations with girls from across the state & their team leader. Students will also hear from our keynote speaker and our Innovate for Good finalists who will present their final projects for our conference attendees to vote for a winner!

For the safety of our teachers, students, and facilitators, masks will be required to wear throughout the conference during the breakout sessions and indoors. The masks may be taken off to eat lunch. We ask that girls who are sick or have any COVID-19 symptoms to stay home. Please refer to the CDC website here for more information about COVID-19.

The Girls of Promise® 2023 Conference will be a one-day event at the Arkansas 4-H Center in Little Rock, Arkansas so lodging is not necessary. However there will be optional lodging available on site at the Arkansas 4-H Center for schools that travel in on Thursday, April 6, 2023. More information about transportation will be available soon. 

Yourself! Any other materials required for hands-on activities will be available to participants at the conference. We do recommend that you take a look at the weather in case you need to bring a jacket, umbrella, etc.

We encourage students to participate as fully as they can but we understand life happens. Please plan to attend full breakout sessions as possible though to ensure our speakers and other participants aren’t interrupted or distracted. If you need to leave early, however, please try to let us know beforehand! 

All students must complete an online application and will be subject to WFA’s established admissions criteria. We are unable to guarantee acceptance of all of a chaperone’s students as a group because our admissions process values racial, socioeconomic, and geographical diversity.

Girls wanting to participate in Girls of Promise® are required to complete an application and obtain a recommendation from a teacher or counselor in their school. This form is completed online by the teacher/counselor by the deadline indicated on the form. Students will not be accepted into the program without this recommendation.

It is extremely important that your daughter complete the application herself. There are several reasons why we ask that you not help your daughter with the application process. Applications are essay-based. It is not fair that you – an adult – write an essay that will compete with essays written by eighth-grade girls. Also, if your daughter is not interested in STEAM areas of study or in attending a conference on these subjects, applying for her is not going to convince her to consider career paths in these disciplines. Perhaps you can guide her to the Girls of Promise® section of WFA’s website to raise her interest and encourage her to apply.

One thing we’ve learned over the years of hosting this conference is that if a young woman does not want to be at the conference, she will negatively influence the other young women attending. The young women who attend Girls of Promise® are eager to learn about future career opportunities and we want them to have as positive an experience as possible at the conference.

Girls of Promise® Conference is an admission-based program. This means that all young women wishing to attend a conference must complete an application. Applications are completed online and are reviewed after the application deadline. Those young women who best meet our admissions criteria are invited to attend the program. Applications for our 2023 Girls of Promise® Conference will close on Friday, February 10, 2023.

We seek girls in the eighth grade with an expressed interest in science, technology, engineering, or math. We are interested in YOU as a person. We are seeking girls who have a desire for knowledge and an interest in STEAM fields. We hope to give you a good understanding of the work that is necessary to succeed in these fields while you are at the conference and inspire you to follow your dreams. Our admissions process does prioritize and value diversity – not only racial and socioeconomic but also geographical as we realize these opportunities are not offered as often in various parts of our state.

There are two essay questions that you must answer in the application process. They are:

1). What led to your interest in STEAM? (Courses, activities, mentors/teachers/parents, or other experiences and interests)*

2). What is something you hope to gain from the experience of attending the Girls of Promise conference?*

These can be answered in text, audio, or video format.

The essay questions are the only place in the application process where you have an opportunity to tell us about YOU. We ARE interested. We want to know about your interest in STEAM. We want to hear about your experiences, your dreams. We want to know that you are smart, motivated, ready to take on the world – whatever you want to share with us so that we have a good sense of just who you are. We are truly interested in YOU.

WFA will accept 150 students and maintain a waiting list of 10 – 20 students. If one of the original 150 students selected is unable to attend, a girl from the waiting list will be contacted and accepted in her place. Occasionally, we will not know a young woman is not attending until registration on the day of the conference. Girls on the waiting list should be prepared to receive an email that they have been accepted after late February / early March 2023.

Applicants who have been selected in this process will be notified through email by early February 2023. If you can not find an email, please check your spam or have the parent or teacher listed on your chaperone check their email. We will send a follow-up email if we have not received your RSVP by the third week of February as a reminder to submit it by the end of the week. If you or the contact listed on your application have not heard from us by the last week of February, please reach out to gopconference@womensfoundationarkansas.org.

Sadly, we cannot accept all applicants. Please do not take our decision as a judgment of you as a student or as a person. We receive almost twice the number of applications as the number of girls who can be selected to attend and take a holistic view of each student into our admissions process. We encourage you to learn about our other programs offered for 6th-12th grade girls, including our Innovate for Good Competition, formerly known as Tech for Good.

If you are accepted and are no longer able to attend, please fill out your RSVP with No by the deadline. If you have already submitted your RSVP as attending and no longer can, please email gopconference@womensfoundationarkansas.org as soon as you know you are unable to attend.

Girls of Promise® is designed for eighth-grade girls. However, there are opportunities for program alumnae in grades 9 – 12 to attend other Girls of Promise events, such as our summer & December coding summits.

We also want you to stay in touch via Facebook and Instagram (@GirlsofPromise). Let us know what you are doing; share information on fun educational camps that you hear of or have attended; post photos from the conference or educational projects you are working and so on. The Girls of Promise® Facebook page is there for you to support one another in your studies and aspirations. As our program develops and grows, more opportunities will open up for Girls of Promise® alumnae.