Claire Schroeder gathers a group of middle school-aged girls into a circle. She asks them to perform some sort of movement as they introduce themselves to help them remember each other's names.

Schroeder then does a little dance as she says her name to illustrate.

Schroeder, 25, is the Girls RAP and health instructor on Powerful Voices' full-time staff of 12. She was born and raised in New York and originally came to Seattle to work for AmeriCorps.

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"You have to be committed to relating to youth," Powerful Voices Executive Director Tanya Kim said.

"You can have great experiences and ideas, but if you can't connect, it won't work out."

Schroeder appears to relate to the group as she helps with their community service project of stocking warehouse shelves for the non-profit group Treehouse.

Anshu Wahi, 26, another Powerful Voices leader, is Ivy League-educated (Dartmouth and Harvard) and works with adolescent girls from the inner city.

"I believe in the cause of working with young girls," Wahi said.

"We're being honest about issues and not hiding things or being hypocritical. My experiences have led me to believe that there is so much power in that honesty."

She shares those experiences with the 30-some middle-schoolers in her group, Girls RAP.

"We go hear feminist speakers. We went to see Gloria Steinem. We examine the media and its roles in our lives and we talk," she said.

When it is Wahi's turn to introduce herself, she kicks a leg up and claps beneath it.

"Of course she'd do something like that," one of the girls howls with a laugh as she nearly kicks the girl behind her.

LaRond Baker, 32, is late to this shindig, but wants to say hi to the girls, too. Baker, who taught GED classes at the King County Correctional Facility for two years before joining Powerful Voices, is moving from the STAGES program to be the instructional coordinator for the InDetention program, which serves up to 325 young women in the juvenile detention system.

The goals of this program are the same as the after-school programs, but focus on different issues. In the InDetention program, Baker deals more with sexual decision-making, domestic violence, drug and alcohol counseling and legal issues.

"You love to see the change in people's lives and working with young people, you get to see that," Baker said.

Baker said she has a hard time breaking from the fresh faces of the girls in the after-school programs, but bright smiles meet her from behind bars, too.

"They're still really bright and these girls, some of them are just brilliant. They've just gotten into difficult situations, but when they think of a better future, those smiles are there," she said.

Kim directs the Powerful Voices program that also includes about 30 volunteers and a total of about 400 participants. Last year's operating budget was about $611,000.

"People (who work here) are driven by our mission. They don't come for a paycheck," Kim said.

The mission is rooted in the belief that strong girls make strong, productive women.

A glance around this circle of girls, announcing their names and shaking hips or snapping fingers, shows a slice of this strength -- and it starts with the powerful voices of the staff.

In addition to Powerful Voices, other groups that will benefit from this year's drive are: Forgotten Children's Fund, the Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center, New Futures, Northwest Child, the Family & Adult Service Center and Rise n' Shine.

READERS CARE FUND

For more than a quarter-century, Seattle P-I readers have donated generously to the newspaper's annual Readers Care Fund, generating more than $5.4 million for local charities. Today we feature another one of the seven charities that will benefit from this year's drive.