Teens inspire crowd at Girls Inc. luncheon

DANVERS – Five teenage girls had a room of 500, mostly adults, alternately in tears and on their feet with cheers during Girls Inc.’s 26th annual Celebration Luncheon at the DoubleTree hotel in Danvers.”These girls are going places,” said Annalisa Di Palma, president of the Girls Inc. board of directors. “Their dreams are big, their plans are bold.”Emcee Latoyia Edwards, the New England Cable News evening anchor, introduced Panagiota “Paula” Agganis, Lindsey Crowley and Chioma Ogbuike, who were each honored as a Girl Hero and awarded a $1,500 scholarship, and Eseosa Asiruwa and Victoria Aboagye-Adinkra were honored as National Scholars Girls Inc.Ogbuike made it clear how important Girls Inc. is to her after calling the Highland Street organization a refuge from her home life and quietly breaking into tears.”It’s an oasis for me and it’s empowered me, and now I am able to focus on the positive,” she said after collecting herself. “They taught me to be kind to myself as well as to others.”As she readies for college life, the Lynn English senior said she will be sad to leave Girls Inc. but excited to go out into the world to learn and travel and one day come back so that she can give back.”The one thing I take away is that I can and I will be a competitive and decisive businesswoman as well as a phenomenal mother, which is what I want to be.”Asiruwa said Girls Inc. took “a shy, reserved girl, afraid of her own voice” and rocked her out of her comfort zone. After being picked to work as a Teen Health Ambassador, Asiruwa found herself talking to kids about safe sex and adolescent pregnancy, which initially made her cringe but eventually made her confident.”I saw that I made an impact,” she said. “It was great to see teens want to rise above the stereotypes society had put on them.”The Classical High School senior also credits the Girls Inc. experience with helping her to get into the college of her dreams.”Girls Inc. reinvented me into the person I am today,” she said.Crowley, also a Classical senior, said she remembers her first day at Girls Inc. She was five and excited to be following in her big sisters’ footsteps. It became a place where she learned to overcome fears, communicate and play, while making lifelong friends, she said.Crowley said playing might not seem important, but it’s how she learned to get along with people, negotiate, cooperate and problem-solve, all skills she will take with her to Salem State University, where she plans to study nursing.Agganis credits Girls Inc. with helping her to be the first in her family to go to college. The Classical senior came to Girls Inc. her sophomore year after Crowley recommended she become a peer tutor.”I realized I was in love for the first time and it was with Girls Inc.,” she said.About the same time she discovered her second love, science, and quickly became a Beach Sister, a leader in a program that educates girls about environmental issues and science careers.”I have been accepted to six different colleges and, as you can probably tell, I will study science,” she said. “And I will be back one day sitting where you are.”Aboagye-Adinkra told the crowd that failure is not an option in her home. She said her father, who brought the family to the U.S. after winning the immigration lottery in Ghana, told her that if she worked hard and got to the top of her class, people would overlook her immigrant status. However, she struggled between pleasing her friends and pleasing her father, she said. Girls Inc. helped her learn to please herself.Aboagye-Adinkra said she struggled with self-image and as a middle schooler was essentially a mean girl to those she was jealous of.”Not my finest moment,” she said.But a leader at Girls Inc. taught her that she had the power to choose her own path and that there was more to her than her physical appearance. It gave her the confidence to work hard and accept a scholarship to Pingree Academy, where as a senior she is trying to decide which of t