BGKB Ambassador Program
The BGKB Ambassadors Program begins as an intensive summer experience and extends into a yearlong leadership journey for Black girls in middle and high school across the country. With foundations in Black feminist traditions, cultural memory, and radical imagination, the summer program serves as the foundational entry point where participants are introduced to the political, creative, and relational frameworks that shape the full Ambassadors experience. From there, a cohort of returning Ambassadors continues into the yearlong program, where relationships deepen and leadership practice becomes sustained.
Across both phases, the program builds a sacred, liberatory learning space where Black girls are seen and held without judgement. During the summer, sessions center immersive political education, creative exploration, and community building. During the academic year, Ambassadors meet biweekly for ongoing political education, cultural analysis, and self-determined future building, with off-weeks dedicated to writing workshops, academic support, and mentorship.
BGKB Ambassadors is a living commitment to the protection, celebration, and safekeeping of Black girls. It offers a liberatory alternative to harmful systems via culturally responsive teaching, restorative practices, and the radical belief that Black girls are whole, brilliant, and already equipped with the knowledge to shape the world around them.
The curriculum moves through key themes such as hip-hop feminism, land and food justice, fashion as resistance, colorism, adultification, abolitionist education, archival storytelling, reproductive justice, and Black girlhood studies. Ambassadors are trained in oral history collection, mutual aid design, and community-centered campaign building. They are also invited to express their learning through poetry, podcasting, visual art, zines, performance, and policy writing, depending on their voice and vision.
At its core, the BGKB Ambassadors Program is about continuity, care, and collective power. The summer experience plants the seed. The yearlong program deepens the roots. Together, they cultivate Black girls as scholars, artists, organizers, and world-builders who do not just take up space, but transform it.
Questions? Email info@blackgirlsknowbest.org! Ready to apply? Click the link below!
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Frequently Asked Questions:
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Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth ages 11–18 who are passionate about justice, storytelling, community-building, and creating change.
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Each Ambassador designs a final project rooted in their personal interests and community. These are presented to peers, stakeholders, and partners. Think zines, podcasts, mini-campaigns, research presentations, art pieces, or panel discussions.
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We treat Black girls as whole people. That means we support their academic growth and their emotional wellness, cultural curiosity, and sense of self. We provide mentorship, affirm their identities, and connect them to a powerful national network.
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We use the word girl as both a political and cultural identity, one that makes space for the full spectrum of Black girlhood. That includes cisgender girls, transgender girls, non-binary youth, gender-expansive youth, and anyone who identifies with, relates to, or moves through the world in ways shaped by Black girlhood and femininity.
Black girlhood is not one-size-fits-all. It’s a constellation of experiences, identities, lineages, and languages. We honor how expansive that really is. For many, “girl” is not just a gender label, but a cultural touchpoint, a site of memory, a way of being that can hold softness, survival, and style all at once.
At BGKB, we’re building a space where Black girls in all their forms, past, present, and becoming, feel seen, protected, and powerful. That means welcoming those who live at the margins of gender, while still fiercely centering Black girl culture as our foundation.
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About 2–4 hours per week, including live sessions, independent reflection time, optional workshops, and project development. Some months may be lighter or heavier depending on the programming schedule.
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The program is completely free. We believe Black girls deserve access to quality programming without financial barriers. Ambassadors also receive supplies, gifts, and stipends when available.
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Most leadership programs train Black girls to succeed in systems that were never meant to include them (etiquette, respectability, etc.), offering visibility without safety, opportunity without protection, and "empowerment" that often means assimilation. We reject that.
At BGKB, we don’t prepare girls to rise through broken systems. We teach them to break them open and to imagine, build, and lead in entirely new ways. Our program is grounded in Black girlhood studies, cultural memory, and liberatory practice. We teach from the archives, from the block, from the soil, and from the stories our grandmothers never got to finish.
We go beyond curricula, we offer connection, protection, and a living practice of Black feminist care. Every Ambassador is part of a national collective of girls who are creating new ways to learn, live, and lead.