Sister 2 Sister has made an impact on Oliva Groucher’s life.

The empowerment club, which operates at Poughkeepsie’s high and middle schools, strives to support female students through open discussion, guest speakers and community service projects.

Most of the friends she’s made in high school, Groucher said, have come through Sister 2 Sister.

“The bond is the most important part of the club,” she said.

The bond was recently expanded with the creation of a sister club aimed at aiding students at the elementary level.

In February, Sisters of Steel was launched at Clinton Elementary. The goal, Clinton Community Schools liaison Lesley Rodriguez said, was to create a club to help develop students’ social skills, while also providing a sense of belonging and mentorship from the Sister 2 Sister high schoolers.

Seven Clinton students attended the meeting in February. In March, the number grew to 17.

In that second meeting, “you could tell the girls were becoming a little more outspoken, both high school and elementary.”

Both Rodriguez and Takiyah Ingram, faculty advisor for the high school club, touted the relationship between the clubs as being reciprocal. The high school group creates lesson plans for their Clinton counterparts and gains experience communicating.

“It’s a balance,” Rodriguez said. “It helps the girls from the high school become a mentor and just kind of collaborate with them.”

In deciding how to shape the high school group’s meetings, Ingram said she tries to think about what and who she needed at that age that could have provided her with the tools to succeed. She said her students can do the same for the girls at Clinton.

“The most important thing is the relationship building. You’re in elementary school and you’re just a little girl in school trying to figure it out,” Ingram said. “I think our girls have a lot to offer.”

Groucher, the Class of 2024 valedictorian, said she enjoys seeing how happy the Clinton girls are to see her group, remembering she was once like that with older students.

“I like just knowing that they see where they can be in a couple years, and be that person that helps them see the future,” she said.

Rodriguez said she has already seen some students begin to come out of their shell.

“We have one girl who just speaks Spanish. There’s a girl in the high school group who is bilingual, so she was able to communicate with the student here,” Rodriguez said. “This is like having a sister role model in the high school, to help them embrace themselves and find themselves.”

Already, the Community Schools Department and other school officials are looking into how the program could be expanded to the other district elementary schools.

The hope is for the elementary groups to feed in to the middle school and eventually high school Sister 2 Sister groups, giving students a sense of familiarity and stability throughout their time learning in the district.

“We are a community. But Poughkeepsie is big,” Rodriguez said. “This helps them go up to the next grade level with the confidence that they have their mentor.”