WESTBROOK— Molly Olsen and Andrea Levinsky felt that Maine Girls Academy, as the only all-girls school in Maine, was the perfect place for their annual Girls Leadership Camp.

But when the Portland school, formerly known as Catherine McAuley High School, closed last month despite pushback from alumni and current families, Olsen and Levinsky were left scrambling, albeit it temporarily, to find a new venue.

“We weren’t told the news, we heard it on the news that MGA was closing,” said Olsen, a Gorham resident. “We heard on a Thursday and we had a new venue and sponsor by Monday.”

Despite the setback, Levinsky, who recently moved back to Portland from Boston, knew the weeklong camp, open to girls 8 to 11, had to go on.

“We had already put a lot of effort in putting the camp together and getting speakers and already had kids signed up, so in my mind, giving up was not an option,” she said. “We knew we had to find space and we had to make it happen. It was too important not to.”

Levinsky and Olsen were able to secure a space at the Walker Memorial Library. The camp will be held from 8:30 to 3 p.m. Monday, July 30, through Friday, Aug. 3. As of Monday afternoon, there were still openings.

Levinsky initially reached out to the Intercultural Community Center, where she works as a summer school teacher. The organization, located on Patrick Drive, was happy to sponsor the camp, but could not accommodate it because of expansion work on its facility to include several new classrooms. The center’s summer school offering has been operating at Canal School during the summer construction.

Through the partnership with the Intercultural Community Center, Olsen said, she and Levinsky decided to offer scholarships to girls at the center. 

Intercultural Community Center Development Director Karen Collins, who helped start the organization 4½ years ago, said she is “really excited” for these girls, among the youngest the organization services, to have a chance to attend the leadership camp.

“It will extend their learning. This is our last week of summer school,” Collins said Monday, July 23. “It will be a pretty diverse group. It will give them a chance to be with non-immigrant children and make new friends.”

Olsen, an English teacher at Massabesic Middle School, and Levinsky, who will begin as the extended learning opportunity coordinator at Portland High School next month, started the camp in 2016 through their Girls Are organization to help young girls develop leadership skills. After working at a series of summer camps in the area, Olsen and Levinsky, friends since seventh grade, saw a need for a girls leadership camp and decided to make it happen.

“It seemed like there was a need for that out there and we could fill that need,” Olsen said.

The goal of the camp, she said, is to have the campers “leave feeling confident enough, prepared enough and hungry enough to take on leadership roles and know they can do it.”

“It shows girls there are different type of leaders. It isn’t about a title and there isn’t just one way to be a leader,” Levinsky said.

The first four days of the camp are devoted to an adjective girls embody, the organizers said. On Monday, programming will center around being creative and include a visit from local poet Maya Williams. Tuesday’s session will include a visit from the Maine Roller Derby team for Strong Day. Wednesday will focus on kindness with Brie Roche, a humane educator at the Animal Welfare Society in West Kennebunk who also owns Brie’s Best Guest, an organization that brings prince and princess characters to kids’ birthday parties and hospital rooms. Thursday will focus on being smart with special guest Emily Dunewila, a massage therapist in Scarborough.

The camp will also be offered at Fiddlehead Arts and Science Center in Gray Aug. 6-10. .For more information, visit facebook.com/girlsare or email girlsarecamp@gmail.com.

Michael Kelley can be reached at 781-3661 x 125 or mkelley@keepmecurrent.com or on Twitter @mkelleynews.

Girls from Girls Are’s leadership camp show off a string of paper links with adjectives that describe them. This year’s camp, happening next week, will be relocating from Maine Girls Academy in Portland to the Walker Memorial Library in Westbrook.