Girls Incorporated of the Greater Peninsula

Girls Inc. Operation SMART^® builds girls' skills and interest in science, math, and technology. Hands-on activities give girls the opportunity to explore, ask questions, and solve problems. Components of Operation SMART include: Eureka! ®, GirlsLink SM, GirlsLink Gets SMART, Girls Dig It, and Career Action.

Girls Inc. Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy^® helps girls identify ways and reasons to avoid early pregnancy. The program fosters girls' communication skills, provides basic health education, and encourages girls to plan for the future through four age-appropriate components: Growing Together SM, Will Power/Won't Power ®, Taking Care of Business SM, and Health Bridge SM. The first two components have been translated into Spanish as Crecer Juntas and Querer/Poder Decir "no".

Girls Inc. Media Literacy^® encourages girls to think critically about media messages and fosters their awareness of the scope and power of the media and its effects of girls and women. Girls gain media literacy skills that enhance their ability to critically examine and advocate for change in entertainment, news and advertising media.

Girls Inc. Project Bold^® strengthens girls' abilities to lead safer lives. Girls develop strategies for self-defense (including physical techniques), for seeking out and talking with caring adults about personal violence, and for advocating on violence issues for girls and young women. Age-appropriate components include Kid-Ability!TM (Kid Jr.), Action for Safety SM and Taking Action.

Girls Inc. Economic Literacy^® introduces girls as young as six to basic financial concepts, including money management and investment. The program explores how money affects us locally and globally as it fosters development of the skills needed to be financially self-sufficient.

Girls Inc. Friendly PEERsuasion^® builds girls' skills for resisting pressure to use harmful substances such as alcohol, tobacco, household chemicals and other drugs. The two-part substance abuse prevention program teaches girls ages 11 to 14 healthy ways to manage stress and confront peer, media and other pressures. The girls then assume roles as PEERsuaders for younger girls.

Girls Inc. Sporting Chance^® builds movement and athletic skills, cooperative and competitive spirit, health awareness, and interest in all sports as girls explore career opportunities related to sports and experience the benefits of healthy risk taking. The program lays a foundation for a lifetime of sports participation through two age-appropriate programs: Steppingstones SM and Bridges SM.

Assume girls are interested in math, science, and technology. Too many girls — and too many children of color — still get the message that math and science aren’t for them. Research shows that parents, teachers and other adults typically expect girls not to perform as well as boys in science, math, and related subjects regardless of their true potential or demonstrated abilities. At Girls Incorporated sites, however, girls jump at the opportunity to dismantle machines, care for and study insects and small animals, and solve logic puzzles. Instead of struggling to get the boys to share the tools, in an all-girl environment girls can focus on the task at hand — and have fun while they’re at it.

Let them make big, interesting mistakes. Girls who are overly protected in the lab or on the playground have few chances to assess risks and solve problems on their own. At Girls Incorporated, once dreaded mistakes become hypotheses. Girls are urged to go back to the drawing board to figure out why their newly assembled electric door alarm doesn’t work or their water filter gets clogged. Supported by adults instead of rescued, girls learn to embrace their curiosity, face their fear, and trust their own judgment.

Help them get past the “yuk” factor. Girls who are afraid of getting dirty aren’t born that way — they’re made. Girls Incorporated encourages girls to put concerns about their “femininity” aside and get good and grubby digging in a river bed or exploring a car engine. Girls learn they have a right to be themselves and to resist pressure to behave in gender-stereotyped ways.

Expect them to succeed. In 1999, boys outnumbered girls 3 to 1 among students taking the Advanced Placement test in computer science (73 percent vs. 27 percent). This gap reflects the barrier of low expectations that girls face in male-dominated fields. Girls Incorporated teaches girls that they are not only capable of mastering math and science. They’re expected to continue to do so throughout high school and college. They learn that their ambition is as natural as boys’— and as necessary, if they are to become leaders of the 21st century.

A preliminary program evaluation reveals that the more a girl participates in Operation SMART, the more favorable her attitude toward studying science and math. Girls told evaluators that due to Operation SMART, they would use science and math as adults.

United States teenagers have the highest pregnancy rate in the industrialized world. A third of ninth-grade girls have already had intercourse. From Capitol Hill to national youth- development organizations to community coalitions, those who care about “kids having kids” are searching for ways to prevent teen pregnancy. Poll after poll indicates that adolescents want comprehensive information that applies to their everyday lives. They can “just say no” only with know-how — with motivation, attitude and skills.

Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy gives them that. This age-phased program provides appropriate skills, insights, values, personal tools, peer support and complete information. Based on developmental stages, research, and reality, this abstinence-plus program centers on interactive, informal learning to nudge girls into “owning the discovery” that they have the right to be all that they can be. The key is motivating girls to make smart choices — either choosing to postpone sex or, if not, using effective protection against pregnancy and disease. Nearly 200,000 have participated in the program.

For Girls Ages 9 – 11 & a Parent/Adult Five interactive sessions jump-start crucial, two-way conversations between girls and a trusted adult about sexuality issues — to open doors to future communication. Key topics include parents being the primary sexuality educators; changes during puberty; anatomy, physiology and hygiene; adolescent sexual development and feelings; and values and expectations for teen sexual behavior.

For Girls Ages 12–14 In this10-session program girls learn how to say no to sex as they enter the most pressure-sensitive adolescent years. Interactive sessions center on values; relationships; the reproductive system and female health and hygiene; separating sexual myths from reality; assertiveness and communication skills; identifying and resisting sexual pressures from the media and peers; sexual decision-making and avoiding risky situations; the positive aspects of abstinence, and the power of a positive-sister support system.

For Girls Ages 15–18 Ten interactive sessions focus on recognizing and moving beyond limiting sex-role stereotypes for women; values as a basis for positive decision-making; assertiveness, refusal and relationship skills; avoiding risky behavior, pregnancy, STDs and HIV through abstinence and smart choices; the facts on contraception and protection; and communication and success skills to achieve career goals.

Health Bridge is a health-care delivery model linking girls to community health- care professionals and services—to turn information into action. Centering on the “whole girl,” it is also an essential resource for girls who choose to be sexually active to have access to necessary reproductive health, testing, and contraception services.

A three-year evaluation found: older teens who completed the program were half as likely to have sex and one-third as likely to get pregnant in the year following the program as those who participated less or not at all; younger teens who completed the program were half as likely to have sexual intercourse as those who participated less or not at all.

From magazines to marketing campaigns to music videos, girls today are surrounded by mass media images of girls and women. According to a 1999 survey, the typical American girl uses media of some kind (television, radio, computers, etc.) for over 5 hours per day.

Girls Incorporated has a unique program to help girls develop the skills to wade through the media messages that bombard them. Girls Get the Message ® (currently in development) is a national program that encourages girls and other media consumers to evaluate the messages in media such as television shows, films, CDs, newspapers, websites, music videos, magazines and video games. The program helps girls recognize stereotypes in media and differentiate between those stereotypes and their own lives. Girls learn to "read" media messages with a critical eye as they consider issues of ownership, media business and the roles of women and minorities "behind the scenes" in media careers.

A recent study found that one in five girls (20 percent) say that girls their age are negatively influenced by characters they see on television. Well over a third (39 percent), say that girls and boys are not shown as equals on television. Nearly two thirds (62 percent) view girls and women on television as being reliant upon others to solve their problems.

A majority of girls (69 percent) in one study reported that fashion magazine pictures influenced their idea of the perfect body shape, and almost half (47 percent) said that they wanted to lose weight because of magazine pictures.

In a 1995 survey of 2,000 children in third to twelfth grades conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., Girls Inc. learned that girls are often more likely than boys to have seen programs that upset or disturbed them. Girls were more likely to say that there is too much sex on television and that television is too violent. Majorities of both sexes said that there aren't enough programs that help young people deal with pressures around sex, suicide, drugs, AIDS, divorce and violence.

GIRLS RE-CAST TV ^SM In response to girls' views about television, Girls Inc. developed Girls Re-Cast TV, the first component of the Girls Get the Message program. Since 1995, thousands of girls across the country have analyzed television characters and programs, re-written scenes to be more representative of their viewpoints, and created their own treatments for shows.

To date more than 15,000 young people have participated in Girls Re-Cast TV and thousands more representing each state in the nation have requested and received an Action Kit designed to help girls think critically about media images. Through the program, girls have advocated with television executives, producers, directors and writers to express their views on how to make television more representative of girls' concerns.

In Girls Get the Message, girls learn how to directly communicate with media industry professionals to make their voices heard. Girls Inc. continues this dialogue by hosting events that bring girls and media industry leaders together. At these events girls express their views on how to create more positive and realistic portrayals of girls and women in media.

Girls Incorporated is deeply concerned about the magnitude of violence in girls’ lives. According to a 1997 survey, 30 percent of high school students said that violence and crime were the most-important concerns that school-age children face. Violence against girls is tolerated, especially when committed by people they know. Too often the victims are blamed.

Many girls face violence somewhere in their communities (street violence, no safe place to go, neighborhoods that fear kids rather than protect them); at home (family violence); at school (teasing, bullying, sexual harassment, verbal and physical fights). In a 1997 survey, about half (46 percent) of girls surveyed did not always feel safe in the neighborhood where they lived and one in four girls in grades 9 through 12 (26 percent) has been the victim of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or date-forced sex.

Violence in girls’ lives involves a complicated mixture of environmental, social, and psychological factors. New risks and pressures arise with each developmental stage. In response to our deep concern about the complicated interplay between violence, age, and gender, Girls Incorporated created Project BOLD, a comprehensive, research-based program designed to help girls and young women avoid, address, and cope with violence.

Girls who experience violence are more likely to take risks with their health and safety. Girls who report having been physically and/or sexually abused are more likely than girls who have not been abused to have symptoms of high stress, depression and low self-confidence, and are at high risk for substance abuse.

Project BOLD will eventually include four developmentally appropriate programs. Already completed and available is Action For Safety – a self-defense and violence prevention program developed in cooperation with The Center for Anti-Violence Education for girls, ages 9–11. Kid-Ability! is a child-abuse prevention program for girls 6–8.

In the Economy Literacy Program girls as young as six are introduced to basic financial concepts, including money management and investment. During programming girls look at how money affects us locally and globally and fosters the development of skills needed to be financially self-sufficient.

She's on the Money^® is a program that provides girls with the skills and self-confidence they need to contribute to the economy and make strong, smart and bold decisions about their financial futures. Girls learn how to budget, save, take informed financial risks, and avoid feeling intimidated about money. Equally important, the program gives girls the opportunity to discuss equal pay for equal work, child-care, welfare and other issues that particularly affect women and girls.

Media and technological literacy have become basic elements of modern life, but money is even more basic to meeting one's essential needs. Statistics show that the vast majority of girls growing up today can expect to spend most of their adult lives in the labor force. Most will work to support their families; many will do so on their income alone. Yet, according to a recent survey commissioned by Girls Inc. and conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, although girls and boys understand equally well that it takes responsibility and hard work to succeed financially, girls feel considerably less confident about managing money.

Girls Inc. serves girls who are especially in need of economic literacy. Most come from single-parent families with incomes under $25,000. In 1995 women headed more than 38 million U.S. families. This represented 30 percent of all households.

The ability to use basic economic concepts to make decisions about saving, sharing, and making money, or economic literacy, is a skill. Like reading and writing, a working knowledge of basic money concepts is essential for future success. Whether a girl is from a low-income or wealthy home, lives in a rural or urban community, at some point in her life she is likely to be responsible for her own financial well being.

By the time girls reach their senior year in high school, 34 percent report periodic heavy drinking. Girls are as much at risk of abusing alcohol and drugs as boys are, and in some cases face more serious health consequences. But because girls are often attracted to drugs and alcohol for different reasons than boys, standard prevention programs can be ineffective. In a 1999 national survey girls cited drinking (29%) and drugs (39%) as two of the most important health issues facing teenagers today. The Friendly PEERsuasion program is a unique response to girls’ needs because it approaches drug-abuse prevention as a peer issue, using the positive influence of young people modeling healthy behavior.

Peer Pressure Girls who use socially “appropriate” drugs like alcohol and tobacco tend to do so in groups; girls who use illegal drugs are more likely to be introduced to them by boys, often while on dates.

Body Image In a culture that too often defines female worth in terms of body size and shape, girls resort to diet pills, cigarettes, and other substances to maintain starvation diets. In a 1997 study, four times as many 12th-grade girls as boys reported taking non-prescription diet pills on a monthly basis.

Media Girls are also bombarded with ads from various media that promote the use of over the counter and prescription medications for common ailments such as headaches, sleeplessness, and depression, promoting a quick-fix approach to solving physical and mental health problems.

Abuse In a 1997 national study, high school girls who reported having been physically or sexually abused were twice as likely as girls who did not report abuse to use cigarettes, alcohol, or other drugs.

Stress Girls tend to feel they lack control over their lives. More adolescent girls than boys reported feeling a lot of stress. More girls than boys say that they use cigarettes (66% vs. 49%) and alcohol (38% vs. 27%) to deal with stress.

A successful prevention effort must start early. In a national study, 69 percent of ninth graders had used cigarettes and 74 percent had used alcohol—39 percent by age 13. The Girls Incorporated two-part program trains girls ages 11–14 to advocate for themselves and teaches them how to serve as role models for those who are younger.

PART I: Girls ages 11 through 14 learn decision-making, assertiveness, and communication skills, which include practicing how to walk away from situations where they feel pressured to use alcohol or drugs. Through games, group discussions, and role plays, girls learn about the short-term and long-term effects of substance abuse, begin to recognize media and peer pressure to use drugs, and experience better ways to manage stress.

PART II: The newly trained “PEERsuaders” plan substance-abuse prevention activities for groups of children ages 6 through 10. Looked up to as leaders, the older girls’ commitment to stay drug- and alcohol-free is reinforced.

An independent evaluation showed that Friendly PEERsuasion helped to delay 11- and 12-year-old girls’ use of harmful substances, especially by giving them the skills to leave situations where their peers were using drugs.

Although the number of female athletes is growing, too many girls still sit on the sidelines watching boys slam dunk or sprint toward the finish line. As spectators they miss the chance to develop skills that will help them succeed and habits that can keep them healthy:

- Children ages 9 and 10 who participate in sports rate higher on perceived physical competence and general self worth than those who don't do sports.

- In a study of high school students, young women who participated in sports were 40 percent less likely to drop out of high school and 33 percent less likely to become teen mothers than their non-athletic counterparts. Young women who participated in sports were also less likely to have smoked cigarettes than those who were not doing sports.

- Research shows that adolescent girls who exercise regularly can reduce their risk for obesity, coronary heart disease and osteoporosis.

- Girls who are athletes in high school are more likely to have higher grades and standardized test scores, and are less likely to drop out of school and more likely to attend college.

Girls Incorporated aims to make sports an integral part of girls lives and recognizes that girls have much to gain by early participation in sports. According to one expert, if a girl does not participate in sports by the time she is ten, there is only a 10 percent chance that she will be athletic when she is 25. Sporting Chance provides girls with opportunities to have fun; to learn basic movement and sport skills; increase their coordination, endurance and strength; consider the career opportunities connected to sports; learn about successful athletes and the history of women in sports. They learn how to be both cooperative and competitive, how to discipline their bodies and their minds.

In the Sporting Chance program older girls and teens develop leadership skills, provide assistance to adult coaches and gain work experience as peer coaches.

Ages 6-8: Steppingstones is a motor-skill development program that gets girls running, jumping, leaping, twisting, bending and balancing as they utilize a variety of sports and movement related equipment, including jump ropes, balls, scooters, bats, bowling pins, nets, hoops and scoops. They begin to move more confidently and skillfully, get used to structured physical activity, learn about the positive connection between physical activity and health related fitness, and learn that sport is a legitimate activity for girls and women. The movement skills girls develop in Steppingstones may later apply to the formal movement in a variety of games, sports, dance and fitness activities.

Ages 9-11: Bridges picks up where Steppingstones leaves off, enhancing girls' motor skills while introducing them to the world of organized sports. Girls focus on the skills and strategies of four sports: softball (throwing, catching, and striking); soccer (kicking and agility); basketball (shooting and teamwork); tennis (striking and individual competence). Girls learn the concepts of offense, defense, and teamwork, and develop skills in a progression that leads to game readiness. The four sport specific skills can be applied to many other activities and provide a foundation for lifelong participation in sports.

Girls Inc. Discovery Leadership^®

for Girls and Women

The word “leader” conjures for many people an image of a man in middle to later life. Yet throughout history women and girls have also blazed pathways to progress and change. Girls and women have always been leaders, but their leadership has often gone unrecognized. To address this problem and to inspire girls to become leaders, Girls Incorporated, in collaboration with the Minneapolis YWCA, developed Discovery: A Leadership Program. This 13-session program brings 9- to 11-year-old girls and adult women together to discover the power of their capacity for leadership through community action.

GIRLS AND WOMEN ARE EQUAL PARTNERS

Discovery enables girls to join in partnership with women leaders in their communities to develop and practice leadership and advocacy skills and construct community action projects. One of the principal strengths of Discovery is the opportunity it provides girls to make decisions, take responsibility, and initiate projects in collaboration with experienced women. Indeed girls have been involved in the development of the program from its initial stages.

CELEBRATING WOMEN’S GLOBAL HERITAGE OF LEADERSHIP

In Discovery, girls and women come together to celebrate their heritage as leaders. They discover their own leadership skills through hands-on activities, role-plays, community exploration, and a weekend retreat. In addition, specially selected posters, books, games, CD-ROMs, and other resources help create an environment of recognition and celebration of female leaders from many cultures, past and present. Together, Discovery partners explore and build upon this legacy to form their own ideas about what leadership means to them.

TAPPING GIRLS AS COMMUNITY RESOURCES

A key feature of Discovery is that it increases girls’ and women’s awareness of themselves as community resources, trustees of the common good, and leaders in their own right. Together, girls and women identify issues of ongoing concern to the community and formulate responses using persuasive communication and organizing for action. From removing graffiti to getting a stop sign placed at a dangerous corner to enhancing community awareness of the dangers of drugs and violence—Discovery empowers girls as well as their communities and enables them to explore their own ability and responsibility to produce positive long-term social change.

RESULTS

Girls Incorporated affiliates embrace the Discovery principles that help girls and women develop lifelong skills and confidence to bring about change. Through the pilot phase and since then, hundreds of girls have put leadership into practice through the design and implementation of community action projects created in collaboration with women partners. In Minneapolis, Discovery partners planned a personal meeting with the mayor to discuss community safety. In Denver, the program helped reinforce girls’ essential role in the city’s youth development campaign. Consequently, Girls Inc. of Metro Denver was invited to work closely with local schools and the Denver Housing and Urban Development agency to provide the program on an outreach basis to more girls. These action projects provide long-lasting benefits to communities, and to the girls and women who work together to discover their power to make positive change.