|
|
|
 About |
 |
Title: Ophelia's Voice
Location:
Categories: Children’s Rights
Status:
In Planning
Timeline:
Ongoing
Description:
Ophelia's Voice is a consciousness-raising girls' empowerment project that will be piloted in September 2006. The project was initiated by 14-year-old Joanne Cave, with help from her adult mentors through the University of Alberta. Ophelia's Voice will last from September to June, and be divided into 4 10-week sessions. Girls aged 12 - 14 would meet for weekly sessions based on topics such as sexuality, media awareness, body image, substance abuse, leadership, and more. The goals of the project are to empower girls to raise awareness of these issues as well as to help them develop leadership skills and self-confidence. We are working in partnership with SAFFRON Sexual Assault Centre and Parent's Plce Association.
Background:
The Ophelia's Voice Project was inspired from Mary Pipher's book "Reviving Ophelia: Saving The Selves of Adolescent Girls", as well as Joanne's personal experiences with girls' issues in her community. From there, they drafted the idea for the Ophelia's Voice project.
Objectives:
Our goals are to:
1) We want to empower teenage girls to make positive choices, identify with themselves, and gain confidence and self-esteem.
2) We want to educate teenage girls on issues of relevance - such as media awareness and body image. The sessions will be entirely youth-facilitated, and without the classroom hierarchy. We aim to have an open, fun, informal, supportive discussion environment.
3) Our third goal is community advocacy. We want to provide teenage girls with the opportunity to identfify community resources and advocate and share their acquired knowledge with the community. At the end of the project, we will help each participant plan their own culmination project on an issue of their choice to exercise their leadership skills.
Milestones:
- We have partnered with SAFFRON Sexual Assault Centre and Parent's Place Association.
2) We have compiled the 249-page "Ophelia's Voice Resource and Programming Guide".
3) We have applied for our non-profit status, to be legally named "Ophelia's Voice Youth Empowerment Ltd."
4) We have submitted a $20,000 grant application to the Canadian Women's Foundation.
5) We have held our first successful event, the "A Taste Of Hunger" fast-a-thon in partnership with POWER Camp National Network.
6) Joanne has attended the POWER Camp National retreat in November 2005 and the YOUCAN Resolve It! 2006 Symposium On Youth Peacebuilding & Conflict Resolution in March 2006.
Budget:
We are applying for a $20,000 grant through the Canadian Women's Foundation. This will cover the therapy portion of the program (ensuring that girls have referral options with an on-call therapist, if necessary), supplies, a resource library, and other equipment.
Needs:
We need support from the community, funding, resources for our resource library, participants, ideas for programming, and interested volunteers!
Tags:
You must be logged in to add tags.
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Menu
