I'm Stacia Freeman, founder of EPIC Girl.

I'm so glad you're here. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be spending much of my time in juvenile detention centers with girls from all walks of life, I would have thought you were crazy!

But God has a way of guiding us into our purpose, even when it’s not what we expect…and transforming us along the way. 

Perhaps that same little tug on your heart brought you here today…and it is bringing you to a girl who needs your love and support to become the hero she is meant to be.

I first began working in nonprofit leadership at an anti-trafficking agency.

While the organization I worked with did amazing and (unfortunately) necessary work, I often found myself frustrated by the cycles I witnessed over and over again.

Vulnerable women and girls being lured into abusive and exploitative relationships… 

…the arduous work they had to do to find freedom and healing from that abuse

…only for it to continue with the next girl who ran away from home or found herself without the love, care, and resources she needed to thrive. 

I began to wonder: “Is there anything we can do to prevent girls from being in vulnerable situations in the first place?”

The answer came to me through one of the first girls I met in our program. At the time, I was teaching one-off empowerment classes (an early version of the EPIC Girl curriculum) through partner nonprofits and agencies. At the end of class, girls had the opportunity to fill out a form indicating resources they needed such as housing, employment, or food.

A girl pointed at the list on her sheet of paper. “I need all of this,” she said. “But what I really want is what we did today in class. We had fun and learned new things about ourselves. Most importantly, I felt like you actually cared about me.”

That’s when it hit me: the reason traffickers, gangs, and other unhealthy influences can manipulate girls is because they are masters of pretending like they care. 

And to a girl who has experienced childhood trauma, a lack of healthy relationships, and no support system, that illusion of care feels like water in the desert…until it doesn't anymore. 

I decided I was tired of the bad guys being better at relationships than the good guys. 

I wanted to find a way to harness the power of connection to reduce the vulnerability in a girl’s story and prevent her from being victimized by the world around her.

That’s when EPIC Girl was born.

Through our partnerships with the justice system, the child welfare system, and alternative schools, we connect with girls facing challenging circumstances and help them rewrite their stories before patterns of abuse and exploitation get ingrained in their lives. 

We don’t rescue girls; they are strong enough to rescue themselves. Instead, through education and connection, we mirror who they truly are back to them and model healthier ways of living so they can become thriving members of society. 

And here’s the secret—the true magic—of relationships: the connections we build with girls transform us too. As we learn from each other and grow together, we each find a new piece of who we are, the heroes we always knew we could be. 

I invite you to invest in the life of a girl today. Whether you become a mentor, sponsor a girl, or give to support our mission, you can help a girl write a new story for her future. 

Will you join us?