A thought-provoking new documentary on the Mississippi River is the result of hard work and dedication of young women in the Quad Cities and beyond.
“If the River Were a Woman” is a youth-led, half-hour documentary from Her Voice Media exploring the history, beauty, challenges, and future of the Mississippi River through the eyes of QC young women. Told in three parts (Her Ancestry. Her Body. Her Voice), the film asks us to consider what the river has given us, what she has endured, and what it looks like to care for her well.
Her Voice Media was founded by Rock Island native Jasmine Babers-Gunn in 2012, while she was a student at Rock Island High School and started Love Girls magazine.
Her Voice has grown across storytelling platforms and creative spaces that center the voices, leadership, and lived experiences of women and girls. Its mission is to provide safe spaces for women and girls to share their stories, explore opportunities in media, and grow as confident leaders.
Her Voice Media premiered “If the River Were a Woman” at a special event on Sept. 27, 2026 at The Last Picture House, Davenport, where they also launched the Fall 2026 Love Girls Magazine edition, which focuses on environmental issues. You can watch the film HERE.
Funded by the Quad Cities Community Foundation’s annual QC River Connections grant, these environmentally-focused projects reflect months of hard work, hands-on reporting, interviewing, and shared learning from Her Voice Media’s 2025-26 Fellows (high schoolers or recent grads), aiming to develop the kind of storytelling skills that both informs and inspires communities.
If the River Were a Woman explores the river through three chapters: Her Ancestry, Her Body, and Her Voice. The film features perspectives from voices across our region and beyond, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times-Pilot, Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati, Dan Breidenstein of Living Lands & Waters, Kathy Wine of River Action, Sikowis (Christine) Nobiss of Great Plains Action Society, local historians, environmental leaders, and more.
“Being a part of this documentary has been an amazing opportunity for me,” Tamiah Rogers, a 2026 Moline High grad and Her Voice fellow, said at the premiere. “It helped me get out of my comfort zone and do so many things that I thought I would never do.
“Something that I learned from this project is that there are so many different opportunities out there that we can take part in to help our environment,” she said. “And it’s not just about helping the environment, but also helping the people and our community. I also learned more about the Mississippi River and how important it is to our community.
“We have come a long way in protecting our environment, and there is still so much more we can do,” Tamiah said. “I’m really proud of Her voice Media for giving me this opportunity and helping me get out of my comfort zone. This is something I never pictured myself doing. But I’m standing up here today, doing it anyway.”
In addition to the Her Voice fellows participating and interviewing in this past summer’s filming, the adults leading its production were Olivia Allen (director/screenwriter), Mikhayla Hughes Shaw (producer/editor), Josh Graves (head videographer), Kayla Babers (videographer), Jasmine Babers-Gunn (Her Voice Media founder and creative director), Teresa Babers (supporting director), and Alisha Hanes (narrator).
The Her Voice team put together the environmental issue of Love Girls between June and August 2026, and the documentary was filmed and edited from July through September. Seven of the Her Voice fellows worked on the half-hour film.
Jasmine and her mother Teresa came up with concept to personalize the river as a woman, Allen said recently.
“I think it was super compelling and just like an insightful question to consider, reflect on,” she said. “Hopefully we answered it for some viewers. But we really just wanted to bring that to the community and hopefully humanize the river in a sense to promote that sort of connection and up the personal responsibility.”
“It’s responsibility when it comes to taking care of natural systems around us and just viewing the land out of love, and not ownership or extraction,” Allen said.
“This project I think created so many opportunities for learning and just really insightful connection about something,” she added. “It’s also a really close issue to so many Quad-City community members. You know, so many of us cross the river every day. And we don't think about all that it provides to us and just the beauty too. So I think that's something a lot of women and girls share in their lived experiences. I think it was really beautiful, creative idea and something we could explore still in a very informative way.”
“We take from the river and from our natural systems constantly, many of us without even knowing it,” Allen said. “These natural systems continue to give without asking for anything in return. And that's something I think a lot of women and girls, or I think a lot of women relate and would find they've all experienced, and in my opinion is a sort of societal or gender-based expectation that is like thrust upon us starting in girlhood.
“Another maybe more blatant parallel would be how both the river and many women are like appreciated for their beauty, but then are all too often exploited because of it by people or systems out of their control,” she said. “That's something that it's like, if you really think about it, there are a lot of parallels.”
The film also serves as a voice to advocate for the voiceless, which is the river, as well as some women and girls.
“In a sense, that applies to many women, but of course it applies to our natural systems and wildlife too,” Allen said, noting part of the film asks girls what they would say if they spoke as the river.
Her Voice Media wants to bring the film to as many students and community members as possible.
“It’s just a matter of we're doing so many different projects and so much programming right now,” Allen said. “We're gearing up for our Girls on Fire, which is an annual event in November. So it's just a matter of finding the time and putting together a really clear plan and proposal to distribute. But our magazine will be distributed to school districts as well. But we have also been entering some film contests like the Pulling Focus African American Film Festival.”
Growing and rebranding
A former Quad-City Times reporter, Allen was a Her Voice Media grant project coordinator for most of 2026, and for the past month has taken on the part-time role as emerging leaders coordinator, heading up the Her Voice Media Fellowship and School-Based Programs.
The fellowship is a year-long, paid experience for 10 young women who have something to say — and are ready to learn how to say it boldly, creatively, and with purpose, says Her Voice.
Over the course of the year, participants write and publish stories, create podcasts, work on photo and film projects, learn from industry professionals, and build a body of work they can carry with them into college, careers, and whatever comes next.
Allen works remotely, from Long Island, N.Y., and part of her job is funded by an Iowa Women's Foundation grant that allowed this growth.
“I am essentially just responsible for shaping and directing the fellowship program this year,” she said, noting she’s recently led selection of new ones for 2026-27. “I'll match the fellows and mentors and we'll host our first welcome meeting. And I'm just really kind of responsible for facilitating projects that they'll be involved with throughout the course of the year.
“I'll check in monthly with them as well to make sure everything's going okay with their projects, with their mentor relationships,” she said. “I'll also communicate with the mentors as well. And then I'll coordinate different like field trip experiences, guest speakers, workshops, different things to make sure they have a really well-rounded, gainful experience.”
River Connections is an annual grant from the QC Community Foundation, and Allen coordinated the Her Voice 2026 Healing Illinois grant, which was a $20,000 grant from the state of Illinois to focus on racial healing and community belonging.
“Which was new for me, because I have only been a reporter in my professional life. But I have a political science degree too, and I learned a lot about what it would take to work with a nonprofit and different agencies like that in undergrad,” she said. “So I was like, hey, why not apply this degree? Let's give it a shot. I felt like a lot of my reporting skills could translate to, and it worked out. So she asked if I wanted to lead River Connections as well, and it's just gone from there.”
Reimagining race
The Healing Illinois initiative, “Race Reimagined,” brought girls together to explore race, identity, culture, and belonging through honest conversations, creative workshops, and hands-on media experiences. It was named an Anthem Awards Finalist among 2,500+ projects from across the globe.
The Anthem Awards celebrate purpose-driven social impact work happening around the world, with this prestigious recognition judged by an esteemed panel of leaders from the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences.
The Healing Illinois grant initiative collaborated with diverse stakeholders to increase community engagement and promote racial healing across Rock Island, Moline, and surrounding North Central Illinois communities.
This initiative engaged 80 local students in racial healing workshops with local leaders and social justice advocates, fostering shared learning opportunities and youth enrichment, culminating in a print magazine reaching 1,000+ area students and a digital storytelling campaign yielding increased social media engagement and cross-platform impressions.
“We rebranded in 2025 and have really just grown and expanded our impact and our reach since then,” Allen said of Her Voice Media. “We still do the magazine, we still do a biannual spring and fall copy. We have Love Girls the podcast as well, that has been going on for a while. If anything, we've just kind of bolstered that and have started producing more episodes, some themed editions.”
They recently expanded the QC school-based program to seven schools; they usually meet every other week, and engage in a range of different creative writing workshops, activities, multimedia training, getting to work with graphic design, podcasting, and photography.
“For our middle schoolers, a lot of it too just focuses on empowering young girls to use their voice. whatever that might look like, and just really grow them as leaders and future changemakers,” Allen said. The SBP started at Madison (Davenport) and Washington (Moline) Elementary Schools in 2021 as part of the United for Schools United Way QC grant pilot.
That program is designed to strengthen girls’ self-esteem, support positive mental health, and build real-world career readiness. Through weekly hands-on experiences in media, storytelling, performing arts, and leadership development, participants build confidence, emotional resilience, communication skills, and a stronger sense of identity—all while being mentored by caring adults and creative professionals.
For the fall Love Girls magazine, “we really challenged the girls to identify environmental or sustainability-related topics, issues within the community, and report on those,” Allen said. “So they had to interview sources and, you know, put together a real news story, which is— was new territory for so many of them. And I think they really did a great job. I can tell they were very intentional and interested in it.”
The Sept. 8 edition of Love Girls the podcast (hosted by Jasmine Babers-Gunn and Kayla Babers, with teen hosts) features River Action co-founder and executive director Kathy Wine. (You can listen HERE.)
She shares her expert insight as part of the three-part series, Rooted: Girls, the River and the Fight for Environmental Justice, sponsored by the QC River Connections grant. Wine talks about how Mississippi River recreation inspires more than just river-connected fun: It also inspires communities to keep its local rivers and waterways clean — fostering environmental advocacy that will benefit generations to come.
“I think a big piece of Her Voice Media just as an organization is shared learning and kind of fostering community belonging,” Allen said. “So we'll do panels. We have our annual Love Awards where we recognize different people in the community. And we really just want to empower people to use their voice and celebrate each other.”
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