Brooklyn’s future Meg Whites need your vote

There are a lot of good causes out there looking for supportive clicks, but a rock’n’roll lab for girls is one we can get behind. Clinton Hill’s Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls has made musicians out of hundreds of girls and young women over the last four summers. Campers learn to play instruments, write songs, DJ, work a turntable and even defend themselves (against those future groupies, we suppose). Now the Willie Mae folks are trying to go year-round with an after-school music lab to train even more young musicians, amd they need votes to raise the cash.

The music lab, which has been in pilot phase since January, is campaigning all month through the Pepsi Refresh Project, a funding platform for community projects, to afford soundproofing, instruments, band coaches, event promotion and classroom materials.

The Pepsi initiative is kind of like Kickstarter, with up to 1,000 groups and individuals vying for seed money every month, except in this case, a big corporation provides all the dough. (Other New York City contenders include someone who wants to teach artists how to make sock monkeys and two NYU film grads who need money to finish their film.) Willie Mae’s going for $50K and they have to make the top 10 to get the funding. As of writing, they’re at no. 73 with two and a half weeks to go until voting ends on April 30. You can vote here, and learn all about the Willie Mae programs here. They’ve got a ladies’ rock camp too.