A local agency that works with disabled kids was looking for new ways to mentor disabled girls. Separately, another agency that mentors low-income elementary school girls was looking for ways to expand its services.

Pittsburgh enjoys a wealth of such groups providing services to girls, but they have long worked on parallel tracks to reach them. Not anymore: a new umbrella group called the Girls Coalition is bringing them together and creating partnerships like that between United Cerebral Palsy's UCP Kids and Strong Women Strong Girls, to the benefit of both the agencies and local girls.

As a result, the 8-year-old Strong Women Strong Girls is learning new ways for its college-age mentors -- who try to empower girls through stories about female role models -- to fully involve disabled girls in their after-school activities.

UCP Kids is using the partnership to gain new services for young girls, who, whether disabled or not, "already face so many pressures with self-esteem. When a girl has a disability, that so compounds all of that," said Dori Ortman, the UCP Kids supervisor and program coordinator. "Being a part of the Girls Coalition was really a great step for us and I think other organizations are starting to see that."

The partnership between the two agencies is being funded by another Girls Coalition member, the Jewish Women's Foundation.

"We're very aware of the need for collaboration and the importance of pooling our resources from a funder's perspective -- making sure we're not duplicating our services -- but also just from a capacity perspective. We can reach a lot more girls if we all work together," said SWSG Pittsburgh director Lynne Garfinkel.

The Girls Coalition concept went live this year after two years of work by Pittsburgh's FISA Foundation and other nonprofits. FISA, which largely focused on women's health issues, decided in 2005 to increase its emphasis on girls issues, so it was meeting with a lot of the city's girl-serving agencies.

"We were incredibly impressed with the number and the quality of the whole spectrum of resources available," said FISA program officer Kristy Trautmann. "Another thing also stood out -- they were so focused on doing what they did well, they weren't really connecting with peers on similar issues connected to girls going on in the city. That seemed like a really weird gap -- why wasn't there a network?"

In 2006, the Boston-based founder of SWSG, Lindsay Hyde, who is a member of a similar girls coalition there, held a networking session for Pittsburgh's girl agencies, where officials were astounded by the high turnout. FISA called another meeting of agency leaders to sound out the coalition idea, and tested it out through more well-attended networking meetings. A series of steering committee meetings followed through 2007, and in March the Girls Coalition of Southwestern Pennsylvania began actively looking for new members.

Steering committee members included the Center for Victims of Violent Crime; the Girls, Math and Science Partnership at Carnegie Science Center; the Urban League; the YWCA and others.

The goal "is not to replicate, not to be one more agency providing services to girls, but to be a forum for girl-serving agencies to connect with each other, share information, share best practices, discuss research about girls ... and be a good network for each other about referrals and potential collaboration," Ms. Trautmann said.

Two other Girls Coalition members -- the Girl Scouts and Progress, a project at Carnegie Mellon University -- were starting another successful collaboration while FISA's planning process was going on. Progress works on gender equity issues by teaching women and girls about negotiation, and was looking to work with girls ages 7 to 12 on a new program.

"That's our Junior Girl Scout age. We know that age," said Martha Riecks, director of alumnae relations, major gifts and planned giving at Girl Scouts Western Pennsylvania. "Negotiation and asking skills are important to girls, their financial health and well-being down the road."

The two agencies created a new negotiation merit badge called "Win-Win: How To Get What You Want." The badge was implemented locally last year and the Girl Scouts may spread it nationwide.

Similarly, the curriculum changes UCP Pittsburgh and Strong Women Strong Girls have made during their collaboration on disabled girls are being exported to the flagship SWSG chapter in Boston.

"One of the real key things is knowing who else is out there, what everybody else is working on," Ms. Riecks said. "Often, especially at nonprofits, we get caught up in the cycle of what we are focused on, but joining together we can share our strengths and make a much more powerful impact."

Upcoming plans for the Girls Coalition include working on interdisciplinary responses to girl violence, gang membership and delinquency; creating a directory of local girls services; publicizing its work through its Web site (girlscoalitionswpa.org); and holding a conference on girls' issues later this year.

Membership at the Girls Coalition is wide open, from nonprofit agencies to parents, girls themselves and others interested in girl-related issues. Annual memberships cost $10 to $100 but it is free to sign up at the Web site for the coalition's online newsletter.