Services to Youth
The primary goals of this facet are to:
* Promote early literacy
* Implement local mentoring programs from kindergarten through college
* Close the academic achievement gaps from kindergarten through college
* Introduce and support Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) education and career readiness
Implement college readiness programs
* Increase high school and college graduation rates
* Award college scholarships and build educational endowments
* Promote and support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
The Services to Youth facet is currently presenting five national initiatives and two signature programs in support of our mission to enrich the lives of, and advocate for the betterment of, African-American youth.
Greater Pearland Area (TX) Chapter
The Links, Incorporated
About The Links, Incorporated
The Links, Incorporated is an international, not-for-profit corporation, established in 1946. The membership consists of more than 17,000 professional women of African descent in 299 chapters located in 41 states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, and the United Kingdom. It is one of the nation’s oldest and largest volunteer service organizations of extraordinary women who are committed to enriching, sustaining and ensuring the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry.
Our core values are friendship, integrity, honesty, service, commitment, family relationships, courage, respect for self and others, legacy, confidentiality, responsibility, and accountability. The members of The Links, Incorporated are influential decision makers and opinion leaders. The Links, Incorporated has attracted many distinguished women who are individual achievers and have made a difference in their communities and the world. They are business and civic leaders, role models, mentors, activists and volunteers who work toward a common vision by engaging like-minded organizations and individuals for partnership. Links members contribute more than 1 million documented hours of community service annually – strengthening their communities and enhancing the nation. The organization is the recipient of awards from the UN Association of New York and the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation for its premier programs. In 2019, The Links, Incorporated was nominated for a Luxembourg Peace Prize by the Schengen Peace Foundation and recognized by the late Congressman John Lewis as a distinguished organization of outstanding community service and influence.
The outstanding programming of The Links, Incorporated has five facets which include Services to Youth, The Arts, National Trends and Services, International Trends and Services and Health and Human Services. The programs are implemented through strategies such as public information and education, economic development, and public policy campaigns.
For more information, visit www.linksinc.org
Meet the Founders
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Margaret Roselle Hawkins
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Sarah Strickland Scott
The Philadephia Chapter 1946
On the evening of November 9, 1946, Margaret Roselle Hawkins and Sarah Strickland Scott, two young Philadelphia visionaries, invited seven of their friends to join them in organizing a new type of inter-city club. This organizing meeting of The Links was not a spontaneous action. In 1945, Link Hawkins had conceived the idea of a group of clubs composed of friends along the eastern seaboard and had spent many hours with Link Scott in thinking, planning and discussing the possibilities of such an endeavor.
The two women envisioned an organization that would respond to the needs and aspirations of Black women in ways that existing clubs did not. It was their intent the club would have a threefold aim–civic, educational, and cultural. Based on these aims, the club would implement programs, which its founders hoped would foster cultural appreciation through the arts; develop richer inter-group relations; and help women who participated to understand and accept their social and civic responsibilities. Besides the two founders, the original members of the Philadelphia Club were Links Frances Atkinson, Katie Green, Marion Minton, Lillian Stanford, Myrtle Manigault Stratton, Lillian Wall, and Dorothy Wright. The club elected Margaret Roselle Hawkins as president, Sarah Strickland Scott as vice president, Myrtle Manigault Stratton as recording secretary, Frances Atkinson as corresponding secretary, and Dorothy Wright as treasurer.