Girls LitClubs in Ceinode Ghana Create Heart Maps

Our day 3 meeting began with the hello song as usual. The check- in question for this week asked that the girls recount and share one funny thing that happened to them this week. Each girl had a very fascinating moment to share. This moment of sharing was another interesting time for the club, as the girls could not help laughing when any of them shared her funny experience.   

I introduced belonging to the club as the strength around which the day’s work will be centered.  Girls shared very inspiring ways belonging can be realized as individuals, at the club level, and as communities at large. The read-aloud poem was introduced and read together. In a discussion, the girls mentioned stars, night, faces, eyes, people, and darkness as some of the images that came to mind as they read the poem. 

The heart maps were the writing activity for the day, and this kept the girls busy in an exciting mood as they carefully, but excitedly, sketched out their hearts on paper, noting what occupies the biggest place in their hearts.

We then created a chart of all the different ways the club belongs to the different groups and people in their families, communities and the world. The day ended with a review of the day’s work, then we said goodbye and promised to see each other next week.  

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A special thank to our Girls Club Facilitator at Ceinode Ghana, Emefa, for submitting these photos and this entry!

The Knights Kenya Launch Girls Clubs at the Spurgeon School

We are happy to share these touching photos of the girls the Spurgeon School in Kenya having one of the first Girls Clubs meetings. Our partner there, The Knights Kenya, has made these gatherings possible. Special thanks to our friend Olivia for making this work happen.

Find out more about The Knights Kenya here.

The Girls learning the Seven Strengths

We look forward to hearing more of what's to come from The Knights Kenya. Looks like a great start!

News from UNESCO Bangkok: Fight Poverty, Invest in Girls

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in Bangkok, Thailand, released an article with these important words: "If we are serious about making a real, positive change to society, we need to make a firm commitment to a long-term investment in girls’ and women’s education."

This week, May 2-8, marks Global Action Week, an annual event commemorated worldwide to highlight the importance of Education for All. UNESCO Bangkok is using this week to campaign for Gender Equality in Education:

" Let’s use this important occasion to take a closer look at this year’s theme: Gender Equality in Education. Education leads to profound life-changing choices. However, in this advanced age of the 21st Century, over 39 million girls in the Asia-Pacific region, who do not have access to a primary-level education, are still denied this fundamental human right."

In East-Asia and the Pacific, a staggering 74.5 million women are illiterate, representing 71 per cent of total 105 million adults. Women in South Asia have only half as many years of education as their male counterparts. in South and West Asia, on average, only one in two women could read and write.

Let us join UNESCO Bangkok in standing up for Girls Education. With our Vision for Girls Clubs this year, we hope to bring our Girls Club for Literacy Program to Thailand in the near future!

The Girls Club at JFK Elementary School in Port Chester, NY is still rolling!

By: Facilitator Alyssa Dudzik

In the past two sessions, the group has excitedly read aloud "Where the Mountain Meets the Moon" by Grace Lin.  Using their creativity, each girl created their "own endings" to the story based on what they learned about the plot, characters, and illustrations in their Girl Clubs notebooks!  The club then went around and shared their own endings, chock full of exciting tales filled with dragons, bravery, and true love.  The JFK girls loved this book so much that they planned to read this chapter book aloud for 5 minutes each week so they can hear the ending Grace Lin chose.

The girls also continue to work on their Seven Strengths posters!  Of all the strengths, (Confidence, Compassion, Sisterhood, Curiosity, Belonging, Esteem, Hope), these girls almost all chose HOPE as their favorite!   After brainstorming what each of the seven strengths mean to them, the girls paired up and wrote words and drew pictures for each strength on bright yellow paper.  Their poster will proudly be featured at LitWorld's fundraising Gala in May!

The Harlem Teen Girls Club Celebrate Belonging

Aisatou (center) celebrates her birthday along with Tiffany (left) and Stephanie (right)

Our Harlem Teens at Polo Grounds just begun their third cycle of Girls Club, so there is much to celebrate! Aisatou turned sixteen a few days ago, so our Girls joined her in honoring another year of life.

The strength that we focused on during this session was Belonging, and I asked the girls to reflect on their relationships belonging to their families, culture, and heritage. We celebrated the presence of our mothers, and how they taught us all to be the women that we have become. We remembered the places we were born, and the cultures we were all raised within. We honored the sense of belonging and pride we feel as those descending from beautiful legacies and (her)stories. All of us coming from different places in the world, yet finding a parallel in our experiences as daughters and young women finding ourselves.

We read a poem by Korean American writer Ishle Yi Park, entitled "Jejudo Dreams", a poignant piece of a first generation immigrant daughter trying to find peace and reconciliation balancing the two worlds she comes from: America and Korea. She writes,

"I wonder: will my ancestors not hear me when I die?/Because of my accent? Will all the history I embody unravel with my time because this tongue/cannot recall the words braided into my bloodline?"

The girls reflected on this, recognizing their own experience in discovering where they belong.

As Aisatou so eloquently and powerfully writes:

I belong to a mother of strength. A country full of sorrow. A painful history. I am proud to be from a land that has fought back. I am proud to be from a mother so strong the sky will surrender to her.

As we ended, I know the girls are proud to know that at this Girls Club, they will always belong. 

-Ruby

Red Rose School in Kenya Connect with Girls Prep School in New York City!

Recently, the Girls Club in Kenya (Red Rose School) and the Girls Club here in New York City (Girls Prep School) got a chance to connect on real time through the power of technology! The Girls Clubs for Literacy aims to create a global sisterhood, so this opportunity for the girls to see and speak to each other face to face builds a bridge between nations, no matter how far apart in distance. The girls were able to communicate at 9 AM New York City time and 4 PM local Kenya time. Check out their photos below!

We look forward to connecting more girls across the world! This is a great beginning to the adventures to come in the new year.