In the midst of ongoing global crises and political unrest, Girls Garage has insisted on showing up with joy every day for our students and community. In doing so, 2025 has been a year of grit, hope and triumph, and some of our biggest builds to date.

Here are the best moments that made this year remarkable:

1. At the start of 2025, Girls Garage launched into a powerful new chapter: affordable housing! Since January, we have collaborated with Rebuilding Together East Bay Network to renovate a home for an aging couple in West Berkeley. Along the way, students learned about framing, insulation, drywall, flooring, tiling, finish carpentry, and everything in between.
   

   

2. In the Spring, we brought back Womxn in the Workshop, the adults-only program. Our rad crew of makers—all of whom had spanned experience levels—collaborated to produce six functional wooden cube modules for our new partner, Youth Speaks. By the end of this short six-week session, there was a shop full of huge smiles and as one participant shared, “taking part in this program is healing little me.”
   

   

3. Girls Garage was featured on KPIX during Women’s History Month! Ryan Yamamoto helped share our story and featured interviews with our founder and executive director, Emily Pilloton-Lam, and Talia Rosen (then Advanced Design/Build student, now a GG alumna!), who has been with us since she was nine years old.
   

   

4. In 2025, Protest + Print students worked on our largest public artworks to date. Beginning just days after the inauguration, these young artists transformed fear and frustration into posters for hope that were also plastered on bus stop ads across Berkeley. Stepping outside of the GG studio, students walked down the road and painted a colorful mural at Truitt & White Lumber Co., celebrating tradeswomxn and bringing vibrancy to an otherwise industrial neighborhood.
   

   

5. Earlier in the year, we announced the creation of our Alumni Program, providing a way for our growing network of Girls Garage graduates to stay connected. This year alone, we graduated 34 students! Along with professional development and workshops, we also ensure alumni across different years have the opportunity to bond through socials, like taking a stained glass class or grabbing matcha together.
   

   

6. We ran a fundraising campaign, dubbed The GG100, asking 100 people to raise or donate $500 to support our free teen programs. Participants received a custom limited-edition nut and bolt necklace and exclusive access to a celebration. From mahjong parties to bake and art sales, we raised over $27k!
   

   

7. Over the summer, we unveiled “Humphrey the Whale,” the whale play structure we constructed for Adventure Playground at the Berkeley Marina. Across two different programs—Young Women’s Design Building Institute and Builder Bootcamp—over two months, over 73 campers ages 9–18 worked on this larger-than-life project equipped with a baleen mouth filled with playful sea creatures, a crawl-through ribcage, tail and fins, a tall spout, and interactive handholds by Girls in Engineering campers.
   

   

8. We completed our first-ever international project! After months of working diligently on the house, the Advanced Design/Build crew hopped on a plane (and a boat!) to Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada for a week-long collaboration with Mudgirls Collective. Our adept builders dove right in to learning all about natural plaster to help finish a local ceramicist’s kiln shed. We even took on an unexpected, but rewarding, breezeway roof project!
   

   

9. Girls Garage, builders, welders, activists, and now, performance artists! What started with a literal dream from founder Emily Pilloton-Lam manifested into a groundbreaking “construction performance” at Bing Concert Hall honoring David Kelley’s 50 years at Stanford. In blending building and choreography, along with original music, a team of Girls Garage students, alumni, and staff constructed a stage live onstage, all in the spirit of Kelley’s philosophy to “build the stage for others.” While this is our first foray into performance art, this very well may not be the last.
   

   

10. To end the year, Girls Garage staff flocked to Guerneville for a night at The Stavrand. Through the evening, we whittled chopsticks, played games, shared aspirations, and garnered a respect for type 2 fun. While not everyone was able to attend, it is rare for so many of us to be together in one place at the same time. We are so full of love and gratitude for the community we’ve cultivated and are ready to pour this energy right back into the students we teach.

What a remarkable year 2025 has been for Girls Garage! All that we’ve accomplished—from the small, like our t-shirt design contest, to the large, like our first-ever auction—couldn’t have been done without the support of our beloved community. THANK YOU for helping us make it such a memorable year for our students!