Taylor McCowan often distributes food and other essentials to those experiencing homelessness as part of her volunteering in the local community. The 17-year-old Texan discovered that many young girls and women needed more than a helping hand; they needed every woman’s necessities. With a family history of volunteering for those less fortunate, it wasn’t a surprise that McCowan would take matters into her own hands.
Originally conceived as a community service project, the Confident Girl project became a success for McCowan and those in need. Soon afterward, GoFundMe would name McCowan one of their ‘GoFundMe Heroes’ for taking steps to alleviate period poverty among young girls and women.
Here is the story behind the woman behind the Confident Girl project; a teenage girl with a heart of gold.
McCowan would describe herself as a “bubbly and sociable” person, as average girls her age would be, loving the idea of meeting new people and making new friends.
“I would describe myself as very outgoing, bubbly, [and] loud. Like I’m very sociable as a person, and I’m always making friends, [and] I’m always talking,” McCowan said. “I’m always wearing bright colors and having things going on, and I love meeting people, and I love making friends.”
McCowan is as typical as a teenager can be; she listens to artist SZA, an AP student, a star Lacrosse athlete, and an avid reader. But, as a lover of DIY projects and arts and crafts, McCowan used her creativity to bring smiles to the face of those in less fortunate situations, leaving an indelible mark on her legacy.
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The junior at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy in Grand Prairie, TX, began addressing period poverty in 2019 as a community service project for her Girl Scout Silver Award. Her decision to continue the initiative; full-time results from her desire to continue it for years to come.
“The Confident Girl Project is what it is today because of GoFundMe Heroes,” McCowan said. “I did my community service project, and now it’s like an initiative now, it’s like something I wanna continue doing for years to come because I now have the funds, and I now have the support that I never thought I would have.”
Within two years, she has doubled her original goal of 100 bags to 250 bags, providing young girls and women with menstrual products and self-affirmations. McCowan said that the project’s name comes from her idea of making girls feel “confident.”
“The confident girl project—it’s called the confident girl project because it is an initiative to make girls feel confident and comfortable,” McCowan said. And it is just giving out feminine hygiene kits with little affirmations on them to girls that are facing period poverty. [And] it’s transformed from just being like—a hundred bags to 200 bags or how many [sic] ever we can now do.”
McCowen wants her initiative to become a nonprofit organization so other organizations, such as the Girls Scouts and schools, could be involved in alleviating period poverty.
“We wanna move it forward to be a nonprofit organization that things like Girl Scouts,” McCowan said. “And schools can pick up and do for their communities as well.”
It was an email the young hero received following a game of lacrosse that led her to learn of the GoFundMe honor. She said her mother encouraged her to respond to the email.
“I got the email after a game—Like I was at a lacrosse game. I check my phone—I’m a 17-year-old girl; if you know, 17-year-olds, we don’t check our emails. Like, what is an email?” McCowan said. “And so I read [email] it on the bus. I was like—I read the email. I was like, ‘okay, I’m gonna just go tell my mom about it.’ So I’m driving home from school with my mom—from her picking me up from the game in the middle of the night. And so I’m reading this email to her, and she’s getting really, really excited.”
McCowan said that her mother was insistent that this was important, and it wasn’t until she noticed how excited her mother was that she too became excited about it.
“And I’m like, ‘why are you getting so excited?’ I just thought it was a little email. And so she’s getting me more excited, and she’s like ‘respond right away. Like, come on, like you wanna do this; this is important,'” McCowan said. And I’m like, ‘oh, okay.’ And I didn’t understand how important it was and how this [sic] is gonna help my service project until my mom started getting excited about it.”
The GoFundMe email arrived at a time of disappointment for McCowan; she was unable to attend the national competition to present her project to a school organization due to the snowstorm.
This Texas teen founded The Confident Girl Project to help get period products to those in need. pic.twitter.com/QMHL2FYuEm
— GoFundMe (@gofundme) April 7, 2022
“I was really excited cause I was really bummed about—I presented this project to a school organization, and I was going to nationals with the project, and unfortunately, I could not go to nationals because there was a snowstorm in my area,” McCowan said. “I was so bummed. Like I was like, ‘oh my gosh, like I just wanna end the project. I just wanna finish, I’m done.’ And once I got that email, I was like, ‘oh, I can continue forward. I do whatever I want now. I’m, I’m finishing my project. I can give out so many more things.’ And so yeah, it was really exciting once I got to figure out what it was.”
As a college-bound high school student, McCowan thinks a lot about what she wants to do, where she wants to go, and what she wants to accomplish in life. She plans to study architectural studies because she enjoys building things.
“I know my next step in life is—I need to apply to college. I start applying in July. And that’s when the [college] common application opens up, and I wanna go into architectural engineering and architectural studies,” McCowan said. “My next step is to get into an architectural program so I can join a firm. And those are my goals. Cause I really— I really wanna build things. I love building things, and I love math. And so I’m like, ‘oh, it might as well.'”
However, as she thinks about her academic future, she also has her initiative’s future in mind. McCowan would like to see the Confident Girl project grow to include a scholarship for girls in need and to see her goal reach 1,000 bags.
“So a year from now, I would like it to be a— first of all, I would like it to be a scholarship, like a book scholarship for girls who need feminine hygiene products in their dorms and stuff like that,” McCowan said. And that’s one of my main goals right now is because I’m a junior, so I’m starting to see some of my friends go to college, and my brother is in college. So I start, I’m starting to see that more. And I would love to provide that to girls who need it, as well as I’m [sic] wanting to reach the goal of thousand bags. That’s one of my biggest things, and I think those are my two main goals for the next year.”
