GGB Summer camp: it worked.
We’re officially one week out from the end of our first ever Girls Gone Buff summer camp: a labor of loved planned mostly through rapid-fire texting, voice memos and phone calls across 1100 miles, that— full transparency— we were pretty nervous to launch.
No matter how many things you try or projects you put out, it’s just as wild every time one “works” because you know how the thing started.
It started as a baby inkling of an idea, not yet even uttered aloud, just floating lightly across your brain like a jellyfish on a screensaver. And then, you bravely speak it into existence and its messy, unknown, bumpy evolution happens mostly behind closed doors. The version the public sees is shiny and polished, not free of flaws or fear but well-disguised behind the armor that is logos, testimonials, web copy and flyers. Your tiny, baby idea… dressed up like a grown up.
It is always a funny feeling.
It was no different with this camp. It started like this and we surrendered to the flow as it became what it is still becoming. Now, we sit back in our respective homes a thousand miles apart and catch our breath from the wild ride that was simply just a mutual idea that “worked.” It’s the feeling of flipping a frying egg and hoping not to break the yolk— you’re pretty sure you got it, but there’s always the chance you end up making scrambled eggs instead.
But alas, here we are, heart rates slowing, standing back from a distance looking at what we made and saying to ourselves, “Wow. It worked.”
Of course there are a dozen different ways to determine whether or not it “worked.” We could use any number of criteria to say whether or not our little idea to put barbells in the hands of teenage girls while teaching them about kindness, strength, community & true health actually “worked”:
Did we make X amount of money?
Did we have X number of participants?
Did all the girls deadlift their body weight?
Did any girl have a major breakthrough about her self-esteem or body image?
All of the above would have been fair measuring devices for us to use to determine whether or not camp “worked.”
But it’s not revenue or numbers or easily-trackable data that lets us know this thing “worked.”
It’s the smile on a girl’s face while she’s crushing it on the assault bike (which, if you’ve used— you know is not typically a smile-inducing device.)
It’s the vulnerability of a girl to share with a room full of her peers that she just met for the first time that she’s insecure about her stomach.
It’s the way it sounds to hear a teenage girl say “Do we get to deadlift today?” when she just learned how to do so for the first time less than 24 hours ago.
It’s the furrowed brow of concern on a 13 year old girl as she listens to another girl explain how she felt bullied on a social media app.
It’s the togetherness of a room full of females under a mutual pact to not compete or judge but to simply be their best selves. together.
That’s how we know it worked.
We know that organizations often want hard data and numbers to prove a cause is worth backing. We know humans love measurable statistics and facts to back up their views and opinions. But some things— like impact and ripple effects— can’t be measured. Some things— like the newfound existence of the bravery to question the status quo— have no way of being tracked.
And we think those immeasurable things might just be the very stuff worth paying attention to after all. Girls Gone Buff is in the immeasurable business of impact, ripple effects, and quietly sowing the seeds of change in the next generation of women in hopes that the girls who come next will boldly be able to say, it worked.
