Altadena Girls was fire relief success, but can it endure?

August Brown, Tribune News Service

The s’more bar was finally bubbling at Altadena Girls’ new community space. A few dozen teen and tween girls, all affected by the wildfires that had ripped their town apart in January, came together for a “cozy cabin” hangout night in downtown Pasadena — some making Christmas ornaments while others applied glittery makeup or kicked back on overstuffed furniture. Avery Colvert, who founded Altadena Girls in January as a 14-year-old, hung garlands and decorations around the 12,000-square-foot complex, beaming that what she’d built was at last open to the world. The nonprofit was still gussying up the podcast studios, rock band rehearsal rooms and the basement “Sliving” lounge — a young content creators’ paradise decorated by Paris Hilton, who coined the term referring to living your best life. “We have a video of Avery touring the space at the very beginning, and she was talking about what she imagined would be in each room,” her mother, Lauren Sandidge, said at the event last month. “To be sitting here, and now most of the things that we were just riffing on are reality, it’s a pretty amazing feeling.”

Of all the charities that emerged in the chaos and triage of January’s fires, none captured popular attention like Altadena Girls. Avery organised her community to raise donations of clothing, hygiene kits and other essentials (and life-affirming pleasures) that displaced teen girls needed — over a million items in all. Altadena Girls became a social media sensation and a celebrity-beloved cause. As the community nears the anniversary of the fires, Altadena Girls’ flagship project has finally arrived — as beautiful a hangout space as a kid could ask for. At the same time, the group, like other fire relief organisations, is facing the challenge of dwindling funding and attention. Altadena Girls raised more than half a million dollars in the first few weeks after the fires. Yet until the hangout space opened, its work had seemed sporadic, and some in the community were questioning whether there would be resources and vision to support Altadena Girls long-term. A new public campaign has yielded just $9,000 of a $500,000 goal in four months.

“We got all this virality and attention, so I think that everything’s been accelerated, including the expectation to have all the answers,” Sandidge said. “I don’t know what next year will look like. We’re working right now around the strategy of ‘can we do all this again without a crisis response?’”

How Altadena Girls started: After the Eaton fire incinerated vast swaths of Altadena, Avery — then a student at the destroyed Eliot Arts Magnet Academy — and her family collected donations of makeup, personal care items and clothing to help teen girls feel like themselves again. Many faced homelessness or displacement from schools and neighbourhoods. They understood the stakes: Sandidge’s family had lost a home in a 2021 Tennessee flood. The family brought the donated items to a Boyle Heights warehouse to distribute, hoping teens would feel rejuvenated rather than victimised. “They’ve lost everything, and I want them to feel a sense of normalcy when nothing else in their life is normal,” Avery said in January. Now 15, Avery is eloquent and compassionate. With her mother, who worked in HR, and Sandidge’s former partner Matt Chait, who works in branding and marketing, they built a formidable public presence for Altadena Girls and became a cause célèbre for a grieving Los Angeles.

California’s First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and Democratic state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez of Alhambra lauded the effort; Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Mindy Kaling posted about the group on social media. Musicians like Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Hayley Williams donated memorabilia for a fundraising auction benefiting Altadena Girls and other charities. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong played a benefit at the Troubadour in support. Meghan Markle stopped by to help in the warehouse. Small donors raised a few hundred to thousands of dollars too. Less than a month after the fire, Altadena Girls announced it had moved into a 12,000-square-foot office in Pasadena. Although the space wouldn’t open for another 10 months, accolades for the nonprofit came quickly, at a time when Los Angeles needed heroes to root for. In February, Avery won the Time100 Women of the Year Impact Award.

Altadena Girls became a full-time endeavor for Sandidge and her team, now up to five full- and part-time staff and many volunteers. She left her job in April to run the group with Ruby Birns, an event and content producer whom she met at an early Altadena Girls event. As of November, the gleaming center was open to teen girls from the San Gabriel Valley (fire-affected families are being prioritized for now). So far, Altadena Girls has hosted events three days a week, including karaoke, Afro-jazz dance classes and movie nights. Stressed-out kids can find calm in specially equipped quiet rooms. The nonprofit plans to open five days a week next year. Young regulars said they are happy to have a reliable place to hang out with their fire-displaced friends.

“I’ve been here every week,” said 12-year-old Journey, who attends the dance classes. “I lost my school in Altadena, and a lot of the kids moved. But I’ve been able to see some of them at Altadena Girls, and it’s helped me forget about what happened to my school. If you think about bad stuff all the time, it affects your mental health. I feel like this is my home away from home.” After one recent karaoke night, 14-year-old Lauren said, “We sang the whole ‘Wicked’ soundtrack; it was really fun and so refreshing. We lost our house in the fire right when my mom was starting cancer treatment. It’s really nice to have a break from normal life and interact with people who are so compassionate about what happened and don’t judge how you’re feeling.” While vulnerable kids have found a refuge at Altadena Girls, in the weeks and months after the fires charitable groups with large public profiles and significant war chests faced questions about their impacts.

Growing pains: The specifics of Altadena Girls’ assets and spending are not public. It only recently became a designated 501(c)(3) charitable organisation, which means its annual financial statements are now public record. Much of Altadena Girls’ significant early fundraising went toward its events, staff and leasing and renovating the Pasadena space (though much of the design and build work was donated). During the worst months of fire displacement, when families were scrambling for community and services, Altadena Girls produced a handful of upbeat gatherings and donation drives.

In May, the group held Altadena Girls Prom for those who missed out on the rite of passage due to the fire. A back-to-school, free shopping event provided essential items for fire-affected families.

An early announcement said “mental health services to heal from within” would be available, yet Altadena Girls’ does not include clinical therapy on site.