MINNEAPOLIMEDIA EDITORIAL | When Our Girls Speak for Themselves, the Community Must Choose to Listen

There are moments in a community’s life when the most powerful thing it can do is simply stop and listen. To listen not to the loudest voices or the most polished narratives, but to the quiet clarity of young people who are discovering, often for the first time, that their words have gravity.

This moment belongs to them.

Across the Twin Cities, our girls are navigating a world that scrutinizes them before it affirms them, consumes their culture before it understands them, and tests their resilience long before it celebrates their potential. Their identities are shaped in an environment where belonging must often be fought for, and where brilliance is too frequently met with suspicion instead of support.

Yet still, they rise.
They rise with curiosity.
They rise with conviction.
They rise with the steady insistence that they, too, have something to say.

At MinneapoliMedia, our mission has always been grounded in amplifying the voices and stories that shape this community. But amplification means nothing if the community does not show up to hear what young people have worked so hard to express. What Project DIVA International is preparing to unveil on December 6 is nothing short of a testament to what happens when girls are given not only tools, but trust.

A Season of Study, Struggle, and Self-Realization

For months, the girls of Project DIVA International have been engaged in a process that extends beyond any curriculum. They have examined inventors and innovators whose legacies reshaped industries and imaginations. They have analyzed not only what these figures created, but what it took for them to persist. They have studied courage not as a concept, but as a practice, something built one decision, one challenge, one moment at a time.

And perhaps most importantly, they have learned to reflect that courage inward.

In a world that often encourages silence, these girls have been practicing sound. In a world that magnifies doubt, they have been rehearsing certainty. They have crafted their own creative perspectives, challenged their own assumptions, and shaped narratives that speak not just to who they are, but to who they are becoming.

This is not a school project.
This is not a performance.
This is identity work, painstaking, brave, and transformational.

“I Can Speak for Myself” Is Not Just a Showcase. It Is a Declaration.

On December 6, from 10 to 11:30 AM, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design will host I Can Speak for Myself, the culmination of this season of exploration and voice-building.

But make no mistake. The power of this event is not in the staging or the setting. It lies in the truth-telling. It lies in the courage it takes for a young girl to stand, center-frame, and articulate a vision of herself that refuses to shrink.

This showcase is a declaration that these girls are not waiting for permission to be brilliant. They are not asking for validation. They are naming who they are and who they intend to become, plainly, boldly, without apology.

And they are doing it in community.

Why Your Presence Matters More Than Your Praise

When adults show up for young people, something subtle but profound happens. Their voices steady. Their shoulders loosen. Their confidence expands into the empty spaces of the room. They recognize, perhaps for the first time, that their aspirations have witnesses, that someone is holding space for their possibilities.

Community presence does not replace opportunity, but it does reinforce it. It tells a young girl:

I see you. I hear you. And I am prepared to stand behind you as you take up space.

In an era where isolation, polarization, and generational disconnect are widening, events like this tether us back to one another. They remind us that leadership is not born at adulthood. It is nurtured long before.

This Is a Call-In to Community

Supporting these girls is not an extracurricular act. It is an investment in the civic, artistic, and ethical future of our city. Every community must grapple with the same question: Whose voices are we preparing to inherit our future?

On December 6, we have the chance to answer that question clearly.

We invite you, neighbors, mentors, aunties, educators, organizers, elders, and allies, to be part of this moment. To listen deeply. To witness honestly. To stand in the same room as young leaders who are learning, in real time, that their voices do not have to be small to be accepted or polished to be powerful.

Because when a girl stands before her community and says, “I can speak for myself,” she is not just asserting autonomy. She is rewriting a narrative generations in the making, one that says she is worthy now, just as she is.

Event Details

I Can Speak for Myself, Presented by Project DIVA International
Date: December 6
Time: 10:00 to 11:30 AM
Location: Minneapolis College of Art and Design

RSVP. Show up. Bear witness.
Our girls are speaking, and this time, all of us need to be in the room to listen.

MinneapoliMedia