Girls Supporting Girls for Healthy Living

Aperçu:

We live in the vibrant, scenically exquisite, arts and recreation rich community of the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. There are many positives here, but as in many communities, we have our challenges. Our resource-based economy is dwindling; with the economic challenges come social problems such as poverty, homelessness, and increased stress on families. With these challenges, we encounter a high rate of relationship violence, substance misuse, and potential of sexual exploitation. We need to do everything we can to equip our youth, particularly our girls, with the skills to mitigate against these challenges. We are passionate about the potential of girls in our community, and we hope you will be also! Our project entails expanding a popular Girls Group program, to reach more girls locally and beyond. We believe that by helping to empower girls, the entire community benefits. Using a fun, interactive format we will teach valuable skills for healthy living, such as communication and assertiveness, self-care, and leadership. The project is three-fold: providing weekly support/psycho-educational groups, delivering leadership and facilitation skills training to older girls to mentor younger girls, and implementation of a social activism project. We will utilize theatre, art, writing, dance, and other forms of expression to explore issues within a female context. Topics covered will include prevention of violence in relationships, body image and prevention of disordered eating, sexual health, relational aggression, substance misuse prevention, and media literacy. We will engage positive adult mentors in the community to work with the girls on the final project of their choice. This may be creation of a video, theatre production, book, art show, etc. The finished product will be unveiled at a public event in celebratory style to include guest speakers. We propose to broaden the impact of this project by sharing this project with girls in other communities, and perhaps globally. The participants may elect to use their project to generate funds to improve opportunites for girls in other areas. Or they may choose to do classroom presentations (to boys and girls) using their acquired skills and knowledge. In this way, the results of the project can be wide-ranging. We expect many positive outcomes from this project, including improved self-efficacy, enhanced assertiveness and communication skills, greater understanding and awareness issues affecting girls and women, improved mental health and knowledge of self-care, healthier relationships, and better understanding of factors that contribute to disordered eating and misuse of substances. We believe when we improve the lives and health of our girls, there is a positive spillover to the larger community. We plan to design evaluation tools and processes that are "user-friendly" such as on-line surveys, focus groups, social media, and interviews. We want to collect as much qualitative information as possible, to capture the stories and experiences of our participants. We want to hear from the community, about how this project has affected positive change and built community capacity. Will we create broader awareness in our community about girls' issues both locally and globally? Will we create leaders who will continue to advocate for girls beyond the scope of the project? Will we help girls reach their true potential, when perhaps they didn't believe it was possible? Will we improve the health of our participants and the community? We hope so! Please support our project, and help us to improve the lives and health of girls, our community, and possibly beyond! _"I am proposing that we reconceive the dream. That we consider what would happen if security were not the point of our existence. That we find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, and protects us, but from what dissolves, reveals and expands us." - Eve Ensler_