EMPOWERED club helps students overcome challenges and reach their potential

Empowered club members Jasmine Lopez, Valeria Perez and Summer Ahmed.

Feeling a powerful sense of self-worth and value is vital to happiness and continued success in college and beyond. EMPOWERED Sun Devils at ASU club aims to make sure all their members feel ready to take on the world each and every day! 

Jasmine Lopez is a third-year student double majoring in biological sciences and global health, with a minor in Spanish and a certificate in cross-sector leadership. Lopez is the founder of EMPOWERED, which is a multifaceted club that aims to foster community and help students grow.

“EMPOWERED Sun Devils at ASU is a club that covers various aspects of empowerment at each club meeting, ranging all the way from feeling empowered while salsa dancing to empowerment in sustainability practices,” said Lopez. 

This amazing club, which has been active since the summer of 2020, provides students with a safe space to explore what makes them feel empowered in life. It’s also a great way to de-stress and find peer support. 

“My goals with this club are to help all members discover their own empowerment, learn about empowerment and grow in their own aspects of empowerment every single meeting,” she said.

Lopez had always wanted to start her own organization in order to help others, and when starting this club she had to reflect on how she could best make an impact on her community. She said her own discovery of self-empowerment comes from her life experiences of growing up as a military child moving to various states and countries, and she believes she wouldn’t be where she is today if it wasn’t for the journey she went on of self-discovery. 

“I had to be empowered enough to re-create myself in every new state and country, to get involved in my new communities and stay true to myself. As a current pre-medical student. I’ve had to be empowered enough to ask for help when needed in classes and in my life, especially with my family so far away in Germany. I’ve also had to be empowered with my goal of helping to increase representation of Latinas in medicine. I aspire to be a physician, with a strong interest in orthopedics and sports medicine, to help others like me and to be the physician I wish I had throughout my past experiences,” she said.

Each meeting, Lopez gives members the opportunity to share freely about their own feelings, affirmations and stress they experience, because she believes everyone should feel empowered to free things off their minds while being in a supportive environment. For the future, Lopez said she would love to talk with members about creating a project the club can work on throughout this year to share in empowerment with the community. 

If you’d like to get involved with EMPOWERED Sun Devils at ASU, you can find them on Sun Devil Sync or on Instagram. Meetings are held on a biweekly basis on Wednesdays at 7 p.m., in person and over Zoom. 

“There are so many amazing students at ASU with huge goals that they are working toward every day. Spreading empowerment and growing in empowerment each meeting will help support ASU students to accomplish their goals, discover their own interests, pursue their own passions and share empowerment around them as well.”