Girls Incorporated of Lakeland, formerly Girls Club of Lakeland, Inc. was founded in January of 1971. For the past 50 years, our mission of providing girls in grades K-12 in West Polk County a safe place to learn, play, and grow has not changed. Our beginnings were humble. Our program started in an old World War II army barracks that had been renovated too many times. The need for a program like ours in the Lakeland Community was evident and our enrollment expanded such that the old barracks could no longer support our program. After a successful million dollar capital campaign in 1987-1988, we moved into a new facility 5,000 square foot facility equipped with classrooms, a three workstation kitchen, a dance room, a large multi-purpose game room, a playground, and an outdoor swimming pool. The new facility greatly enhanced our ability to serve our community. In an effort to provide outreach programs to as many girls as possible, satellite programs were held either at local churches or in partnership with the Lakeland Housing Authority throughout the years.

In 2013, we expanded our services to Bartow and the neighboring communities when we purchased a vacated daycare facility. This location was viable until the pandemic came in March of 2020. The Girls Inc. facility in Bartow is presently for sale due to the pandemic and low enrollment.

In March of 2020, we were providing after school programming to our girls and their families one day and the next day, we had to shut down both of our facilities due to the Governor's order. The girls were sent home to do e-learning and we had to figure out how we could continue to be relevant in our work because the girls were not attending Girls Inc. So we immediately engaged in virtual activities to keep the girls and their families engaged. Every week we performed wellness checks-calling the girls to make sure they were alright. We provided them with meals and any other resources that we knew where available in the community. We were without the girls for two and a half months and primarily worked remotely from home.

In June of 2020, the Governor re-opened the state and we re-opened our doors to the girls in mid-June for an 8 weeks summer camp. We limited the amount of girls that could participate in summer camp due to COVID and us needing to take the necessary precautions to ensure that our girls, staff and families were safe. COVID precautions were put in place with no more than ten girls to each age group, restricted outside access to our building- including parents not being able to enter our facility, temperature checks of girls and staff before entering our facility along with requiring our girls to sanitize their hands when they arrived and social distancing. We were blessed to make it through the summer COVID free thanks to the cooperation of our girls, their families and our staff.

In the fall of 2020, many of our girls chose not to return to school and instead chose to continue with virtual learning. We pivoted in the fall and established an e-learning hub and many of our girls did their e-learning with us from 7:30-4 pm. daily and attended our afterschool program after their school day ended. In addition, for the girls who went back to in person learning, we continued providing afterschool transportation for them so they could attend our afterschool program and continued our COVID pre-cautions.