Prospective delegates of ALA Colorado Girls State,
Each of you likely faces a long list of different opportunities competing for your time this summer. Your time is precious, limited, and each choice you make results in more fodder for admissions essays or extra padding on your resume at the very least. How do you know you’ve made the right choices? What if you miss something and lose out on a key opportunity? Though I write to you with an undeniable bias, I encourage you to choose the moments with the power to change you. If you give it a chance, Colorado Girls State can be one of those moments.
You’ll rarely know it as it happens, but someday when you reflect back upon your lives, you’ll start to see the decision points that forever altered your path. For countless alumni, including myself, Girls State was one of those decision points where I unknowingly took a new juncture, finding a path I didn’t know existed. In striving to serve the program and ensure its future success, I’ve had to reconcile with planning for a future I’ll likely never get to see, which incidentally serves as the inspiration for this year’s program theme.
As a historian with a love of music, I could not resist the opportunity to build a program around a Hamilton theme: “Build Your Legacy.” Near the end of the musical, Hamilton asks, “What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.” While some impact can never adequately be measured and other impact is unintentional, some seeds are planted with great care, consideration and forethought. Some seeds are planted with eyes to the horizon hoping for a better tomorrow, and that is a Girls State legacy I intend to continue cultivating. The 2026 ALACGS Build Your Legacy program is being planned with exactly this in mind, and I hope that you’ll consider joining our fantastic staff in planting the seeds for a better future.
I understand an immersive week-long government camp is intense, but it is also way more fun than that string of words together might normally sound. Yes, every program everywhere likes to claim it can change your life, but very few equip you with the tools and knowledge to do so. ALA Colorado Girls State does. You will get to live through running for office, writing, amending, and debating legislation, learning how to solve real problems, leading from where you are, making change you want to see, and building the community you want to live in. That’s why there’s just no other place like Girls State: it’s the best state in the land!
On behalf of women everywhere trying to leave things in better condition than they found them, I hope you’ll consider joining us June 7-13, 2026.
Marissa Sotomayor, 2026 Director
American Legion Auxiliary Colorado Girls State
director.alacgs@gmail.com
