Ten girls arrive as strangers. They fly home a crew.

Three girls, three films

Short films about three of the girls who've been part of Girls Week.

1:47

1:43

1:49

Why a week just for girls

Heather grew up fishing with her dad and loved it. As a teenager she drifted away from it anyway, because there was nobody her own age to fish with. A lot of girls lose the sport the same way. Girls Week puts ten girls who already love it in one place for a week, so they go home with friends to fish with.

The friendships hold. At one alum's wedding there were seven bridesmaids, and five of them met at Girls Week.

The week keeps going after it ends, too. Delaney came to Girls Week in Guanaja in 2019, came back as a student in the Bahamas in 2021, and returned as an intern and trip leader in 2024 and 2025.

Nobody needs to be an expert. Girls come from every level, from first saltwater cast to permit on the brain, and the one thing they share is that they want to be on the water.

"Instead of being quiet I want to be loud. Instead of being small I want to be big and take up space in my surroundings. Instead of stepping back I want to step up."

Seven days at Mangrove Bight

Ten students, two trip leaders, seven days, with the same lodge, guides and rhythm as every Guanaja week. Mornings on the flats. Afternoons split between conservation work and town. Evenings in a circle, then on the dock. Local girls from the island join the group, the way two local students join every Guanaja week.

Every day runs the same way: up at 6:30, breakfast together, six hours on the water, an afternoon project or cultural exchange, a gratitude circle, a free write, night fishing off the dock.

The circle is where the week turns. A girl who arrived worried she wouldn't fit in hears other girls say the same thing out loud. By Friday she's the one starting the conversation.

Trip leaders collect phones at their discretion, and they're only for music and photos. Parents get a message when everyone has arrived safely, and photos go up on Instagram every day.

"Hearing what everyone else was going through just made me feel acknowledged and way less alone."

The lodge

Fly Fish Guanaja sits by the marina in the middle of Mangrove Bight, a fishing town on Guanaja, one of the Bay Islands off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Two or three students to an air-conditioned cabina. The lodge moms cook every meal and do the laundry. The reef is off the beach, there are flats you can walk to, and the whole town is five minutes away on foot.

The island

English is the first language and there's very little tourism, so for a week the girls are the town's guests.

Getting there: fly into Roatán, then a ferry, about two hours, to Guanaja.

"It's a place where you experience every emotion, and you just want to encourage people to come and have fun."

The fishery

A Caribbean flats fishery of hard sand, turtle grass and coral, guided by the Powery, Medina, and Jackson families. One leader for every few students. Over the week the group covers gear, knots, flies, casting and how to read a flat.

• 4 to 10 lb

  Bonefish

  Big schools around the small islands to the south, big singles around the whole coast.

• 5 to 40 lb

  Tarpon

  Big, small, we love them all. Big resident fish cruising across the flats and juvenile tarpon living in the nursery grounds around the corner from the lodge.

• 10 to 50

  Permit

  Visible in a day with multiple shots. Permit are put on a pedestal for a reason. It doesn't always come together, but when it does, it is most likely the best fish of your life.

"A community of 11 girls was brought together because of a passion for fly fishing. However, this passion is no longer just a passion for us. It became a way to connect to a foreign community that somehow felt so much like home. It gave purpose to something that was a piece of our identities while benefitting everyone involved. Most notably, it became a mechanism for change. It created a space where fly fishing was a method to bridge race, religion, class, beliefs, political views, and more. Fishing is no longer just fishing. It's fishing to connect to each other and to the precious environments that provide us the backdrop to do so. Fishing now means to conserve our ecosystems, to never lose curiosity in the world, and to refuse to stop learning about each other and ourselves. Simply put, it's Fishing for Change."

Off the water

Afternoons alternate between an environmental project and a cultural exchange. Ten service hours over the week, signed off for school.

• Mangrove project

  With the Bay Islands Conservation Association. One Girls Week propagated more than 600 mangrove seeds. Planting the nursery for the fish they've been chasing is how a place becomes theirs to protect.

• Diving for lionfish

  On the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, spearing invasive lionfish with pole spears. They learn that looking after a reef sometimes means taking something out of it.

• Local girls

  Students from Guanaja fish and live alongside the group. Sharing a boat with a girl who grew up on these flats means learning the island from someone their own age.

• Dinner in town

  Small groups eat with the guides' families. A plate handed across someone else's kitchen table is the fastest way to see how differently people live.

• Scavenger hunt

  Small groups sent through town with questions to answer and activities to engage in, building understanding and buy-in to this place and the beautiful people who make up its community.

• School projects

  Cleanups and projects with the local elementary school. One year the girls helped the kids turn plastic bottles into small gardens to take home: useful work they could see finished before they left.

• Waterfall hike and soccer

  Into the hills behind the lodge, then soccer at the canchita with the kids of Mangrove Bight until we've run out of energy for the day. Play is how the island kids go from hosts to friends.

• Testimony night

  An evening with the local church community, sharing stories.

• Closing celebration

  The last night of the week, students, guides and the community celebrate together.

• Group circle

  Next to the sunset or under the shooting stars, we dive into conversations led with vulnerability about our experience and personal growth.

"I loved hearing about the other girls' stories and how they discovered Fish For Change."

Getting there and home

Students fly into Coxen Hole, Roatán (RTB). Trip leaders meet them the moment they walk out of customs. If flying alone is a worry, we can arrange a trip leader or another student to fly with yours from the States.

"This is my first time traveling without my parents, and I have to do everything on my own, so I think I improved a lot in making decisions."

Packing list

Tick things off as you go. The list saves on this device, so you can come back to it. It's buggy on the island: being fully covered is the single most useful thing you can do. Fly rods can be carried on to Honduras but must be checked on the way home, so pack them in a suitcase that fits rods.

Scholarships for girls

A fifth of Fish for Change's scholarship money goes to girls, and there's now a fund just for them: women backing the next generation of girls on the water. Aid runs from $500 to a full ride and is decided on need and drive.

1. Sep
   Financial aid applications open each September.A cover letter (500 words minimum), a one-minute video, a letter of recommendation, the questions on the application, and your family's financial information. Allow about two hours. Nothing is shared outside the team.
2. Feb
   Deadline is the last day of February.Shortlisted candidates do a video interview with Fish for Change.
3. Mar
   Decisions by early March.Book flights, check your passport, practice your cast.

A day in Guanaja

Most days run like this. Scroll through one.

6:30am

Up at 6:30. Music, then the megaphone.

Breakfast together, every day. We discuss our game plan for the day over pancakes and bacon. Then off to go have the best day ever, yet again!

Six hours on the water.

A different boat, guide and partner every morning. That is how you learn to read a flat, and how a group of strangers flies home a crew.

Mangroves one day. Town the next.

Planting with the Bay Islands Conservation Association. You don't care about protecting a place you haven't experienced, so they experience it with their hands in the mud. Or a scavenger hunt: a hundred questions about the island, answered by asking the people who live on it.

Dinner at a guide's table.

Three or four students at a time, in the guide's home, with his family. There are a lot of ways to do life. The fastest way to learn that is to be handed a plate by someone who does it differently, and to help them clean up after.

Circle, free write, dock.

One thing you're grateful for, out loud, to people you met on Saturday. Five minutes of writing that runs to fifteen. Kids who won't speak on Monday are leading the circle by Friday. Then night fishing under the dock lights.