Oasis for Girls Herstory

The Oasis co-founders, Ly Nguyen and Jill Pfeiffer, met in 1997 while interviewing for the same job at the SOMA Teen Center. Ly was a San Francisco native who had recently returned to the city from college and Jill had recently moved from the Midwest. They were both hired at the Teen Center and became fast friends, sharing a love and passion for working with youth. At this time, the first dot.com boom was emerging and techies began to populate the traditionally low-income neighborhood, displacing many locals.

Ly and Jill quickly noticed that young women from the community were not engaged in many of the Teen Center's programs and saw the young women weren’t speaking up if boys were present. Together they founded a Friday night "Girls Group" that included neighborhood girls who were Filipino, Vietnamese, Russian, and South Asian immigrants. The group evolved to become a safe space where the girls came together to watch films, do art, and cook their native dishes together. Through the group, Ly and Jill met the girl’s multi-generational family members and became familiar faces in the neighborhood. This enabled them to build the trust they needed to help launch the grassroots initiative, a safe space for girls.

The group quickly became very popular, making it clear that there was an unmet need in SOMA- and this was the catalyst that created Oasis for Girls. Ly and Jill relied on support of their mentors and grant officers who were willing to take a risk on them. The San Francisco Foundation and a private donor gave the initial idea a real jumpstart. Due to the small size of the first Oasis office (generously donated by TODCO), the initial Oasis offerings were remote programs including "Oasis To Go", which offered arts programming to young women living in temporary transitional housing and juvenile halls. Over time, a village of professional women and men who believed in the vision provided resources to fulfill the dream, rent space, and open up a true physical Oasis. Oasis’ first landlord turned down a year’s worth of upfront rent from a local tech worker and instead chose to rent to Oasis.

Over time, Oasis experimented with various types of programming, hosted talented interns, and grew the Oasis family tenfold. As an organization Oasis has weathered many storms, but the mission has remained the same - partner with young women of color, aged 14-18, from under-resourced communities in San Francisco to cultivate the skills, knowledge, and confidence to discover their dreams and build strong futures. In reflecting back to the organization's earliest days, Ly and Jill both feel a tremendous sense of gratitude to everyone who believed in them and gratitude towards the young women who gave them the space to experiment, laugh, cry and grow together. Ly and Jill, are dear friends to Oasis to this day, and continue to sight the creation of Oasis as one of their proudest accomplishments!