It's important to have a mission in the world! I taught a girls empowerment group with my mom and nana, 3 generations working to instill a drive to succeed. I want girls in my community to be able to understand the fundamental building blocks of success: self actualization, sister-love, physical fitness, emotional wellness, and spiritual wellness. I was inspired by my hoop: using my passion for hoop-dancing as a means of engaging the girls in physical fitness. We also do intro to vinyasa style yoga, and begin each class with a word of the day and concept of the day building on themes such as resilience, self-advocacy, resourcefulness, and ambition. While this program started out with a hoop-dance and fitness as the focal point, it now focuses primarily on art. I would like to partner with more than one organization for this goal. If you are interested in uplifting the youth and helping to inspire a generation of girls ready to do the impossible, feel free to contact me.
This is my favorite photograph of a class centered on "Mission Jars". It is important to track your progress when you set out to achieve. Mission jars are a great way to keep track and remind you of your goals.
I wrote this as a memorandum as how I believe this program could be implemented:
According to Do Something.org, 75% of adolescent girls become involved with negative activities, such as self –harming due to low self esteem and 70% of girls between ages 15 to 17 may sometimes avoid going out due to body insecurities. According to Gabriela Baeza, author of Girls: Risk Factors, “The average North American girl will watch 5, 000 hours of television, including 80,000 ads, before she starts kindergarten.”
Issues of domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, and misogyny are directly linked to self-harming, lack of self-esteem, depression, thoughts of inadequacy during a girl’s early development. All areas of school and education need to institute programs that directly take preventive measures against theses issues by putting girl’s health at the forefront of public education.
Schools must institute programs specifically to address unrealistic media images, eating disorders, self-harming, assessing social pressures. By hosting regular career workshops targeted toward girls that stress themes like intelligence, self-actualization, self-advocacy, we combat media emphasis on physical features.
If schools everywhere make mandatory a spectrum of physical education programs yearly, this will result in enthusiasm toward exercise and encourage the habit of regular physical activity at young ages. Exercise, as a daily ritual (and not secondary) results in the release of endorphins, which improve overall mood, sleep, and mental clarity. The role that exorcise plays in a child’s life can emotionally stabilize difficulties during childhood development. Thus, school programs must promote fitness, healthy eating, sleep, and journaling to monitor emotional health.
At every school, it is vital that girls articulate their experiences during physical/emotional development. By creating a mandatory safety network where girls can express areas that they need the most support and relate to peers, we maintain ongoing dialogues that address and assess emotional health.
During a girl’s early development, it is paramount that she have a network of people who provide guidance and shared experiences. This is a catalyst for girls to develop friendships with peers, as opposed to competing or conforming to social pressures. This also allows the community to detect signs of sexual abuse, self-harming, eating disorders, depression, and human trafficking.
School sports teams, brief talks about sex education, and biology classes are not enough. Girls need a curriculum that specifically addresses physical and emotional developmental needs, teaches stress management/ mindfulness, implements a spectrum of mandatory P.E curricula (Ex: dance; yoga; to cross country) every year from primary school to high school, and peer groups that mediate difficult times during early development. It is imperative that girls not remain in the dark about health or feel hesitant to speak up when in physical/emotional distress.
It is even more crucial that this dialogue of women’s health be opened up to men and that they too are meeting with peer groups regularly which will prevent habits of aggression and additional pressures that boys are subjected to by the media, and combat issues such as harassment, violence, aggression, depression, misogyny and homophobia, thus improving relations between boys and girls and creating understanding.