The women of JLA: Building with purpose, serving with heart

For over a century, The Junior League of Atlanta has been a driving force for change, empowering women as leaders and making a lasting impact on the community. Through collaboration, leadership, and service, the organization continues to shape Atlanta’s future.  

Learn more about The Junior League’s impact, its partnership with the Community Foundation and what’s next for the organization.  

The Junior League of Atlanta has had a legacy of leadership for over 108 years. What are some of the most meaningful ways it has made an impact? 

The Junior League of Atlanta’s legacy of catalyzing community change for women and children in the City of Atlanta has left a lasting transformational impact across organizations and individuals alike. Our history of women volunteer leaders cuts across generations and can be attributed to the development of organizations like The Speech School, Chris180, Literacy Action, Atlanta Children’s Shelter, and the Atlanta Symphony Library. In addition to our work in support of forming pivotal citywide organizations supporting women and children, we have also led and supported monumental advocacy efforts in support of education, human sex trafficking, child safety, and fair housing. On top of these monumental efforts that have spanned over 100 years of service, Junior League of Atlanta volunteers on a yearly basis devote over 45,000 volunteer service hours to our community partners on a weekly and monthly basis, the equivalent of $1.5 million in effort.  

The Junior League has a long history with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. How has this partnership helped your organization further its mission? 

The Junior League of Atlanta’s partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta has allowed us to deepen our work in the community in truly meaningful ways. From the establishment of an invested fund to guidance on how to align our donations with organizations that match our mission, the partnership with the Community Foundations has allowed us to donate over $1 million back to community organizations across the City of Atlanta.   

The Junior League is known for its strong network of women leaders. How does being a part of the Junior League shape members as volunteers and community leaders? 

The Junior League of Atlanta is an organization of women whose mission is to advance women’s leadership for meaningful community impact through volunteer action, collaboration and training. As an organization, we believe that all women and children should be self-determined and we believe that our voluntarism in the community will make the greatest impact to ensure this is possible. In order to grow our volunteer leaders, we focus on three key priorities:  

• We actively educate our members regarding pertinent community issues 

• We train our volunteers with the goal of developing community leaders who make the largest community impact 

• We collaborate with other agencies sharing our goal of empowering women and children to be self-determined 

We believe that combined, these key priorities allow us to successfully shape our volunteer leaders to go out and impact the community to catalyze meaningful change.  

What’s next for the Junior League of Atlanta? Are there any upcoming initiatives or goals you’re especially excited about? 

The Junior League has exciting community work ahead. In Spring 2024, The Junior League of Atlanta adopted Every Child Reads: The Junior League of Atlanta’s Journey to Literacy for All as our community impact focus area. The data in Atlanta is stark: only ⅓ of students in APS are proficient in reading by the 3rd grade, a critical benchmark for future academic success. Despite graduation rates climbing to 86% for the class of 2023, literacy rates have remained stagnant for nearly three decades. And low literacy, in turn, contributes to long-term social and economic challenges, such as higher incarceration rates, teen pregnancy, and poor health outcomes. As an organization, the Junior League of Atlanta firmly believes literacy is not just a school issue—it requires a community-wide effort and our aim is to transform the lives of children across the city through our volunteer efforts by empowering all children with the skills they need to succeed and to refine our advocacy efforts to ensure we are supporting our partners and championing for resources and tools needed to promote student and family success.  

By addressing literacy early and providing support to children and their families, we are looking to not just offer volunteer hours that can help to increase reading scores; but we see the opportunity to help break generational cycles of poverty to set students and their families on a path to brighter, healthier, and more prosperous futures. We believe that every child, in every family, from every neighborhood of Atlanta, must have access to the language and literacy skills they need to learn to read, in order to empower the self-determination of Atlanta’s women and children. Together, through community collaboration, the Junior League of Atlanta aims to ensure that every child and their family has the opportunity to thrive and succeed.  

How can the Atlanta community support or get involved with your work? 

The community can continue to support and get involved with the Junior League of Atlanta’s work in a few key ways:  

• Support an upcoming fundraiser 

• Make a donation to the Junior League of Atlanta’s Annual Fund 

• Consider membership – attend an upcoming Open House and apply today!