Share Your Stories with Us

Want to share your pictures, video, and other media sources of your Girls Circles and/or Boys Councils?

We’d love to see them and possibly post on our new upcoming website!

Use the below “Media Release” form with your group, print it, have them sign it and send it back to us with your photos and/or videos!

LINK TO MEDIA RELEASE FORM

Use either of the below “Case Study” forms to print, fill out and email back to us at moorea@girlscircle.com to share your personal experience facilitating groups.  We love to highlight the stories of our ambassadors in the field.

LINK TO GIRLS CIRCLE CASE STUDY FORM

LINK TO BOYS COUNCIL CASE STUDY FORM

Thank you for sharing your Circle and Council experience with us and maybe we’ll share your experience with our entire online community.

In the words of Jennifer Stone, “Go easy and if you can’t go easy, go as easy as you can.”

- Moorea, Training Coordinator
Girls Circle Association

Diversity Awareness Month with Girls Circle

As “Diversity Awareness” month winds to a conclusion, we continue to honor and celebrate the vast diversity of girls, women, leaders, and communities that are part of the Girls Circle movement.

Thank you, all of you!

Diversity in Girls Circle is about culture, identity, expression, perspective, voice, ethnicity, connection.  It is also something that – when not intentionally recognized– can leave some girls feeling disconnected, judged, or left out.

We have a great curricula – Honoring Our Diversity – for girls.  This 12 week guide is RICH with topics, activities, and discussion questions to acknowledge, involve, raise awareness, and enjoy each girl’s experiences. Some of the topics addressed in this Activity Guide are stereotype busting, local action, culture clashing, and of course, honoring diversity.

A very cool feature of this guide is the Journal that’s included. For each week’s topic, there’s a message and space for girls to write or draw about something related to the topic and activity.

Even when we haven’t prefaced it, always keep in mind as a facilitator that there are all kinds of girls and all kinds of situations.  So, name the obvious: if you are of a different culture or ethnicity than the girls in your group – just say it.  Let them teach you about themselves.  They are leaders.

Thanks!
Beth

 

An Important Message from the Founders (plus video!)

Dear Friends of Girls Circle and Council for Boys,

We are reaching out to our community with an update and important request for your support. Please view our 2 minute video message https://www.girlscircle.com/expand_the_circle.aspx and help us reach our fund-raising goal by December 1st. Donate here today

We want to acknowledge so many of you that have helped expand our mission by implementing the Girls Circles – and more recently the Councils for Boys and Young Men – empowering communities of caring that have touched the lives of countless youth nationally and around the world.

Together, we have responded to adolescents’ essential and urgent need for belonging and we have all witnessed the social change and the shifts in organizational culture that have improved the overall quality of services from the local yoga studio, to the Girls Scout troop, to the after school program, to the Boys & Girls Club, to the group home….to the facilities and treatment centers that house youth in the juvenile justice system.

Now, for the first time in our organization’s history, we need to ask for your financial support. With the current economic situation, and government grants and funding dwindling, we are reaching out to you to help us to continue to be able to respond to the demand related to providing essential training and technical assistance, professional development, support, and quality manualized curricula.

We know that by working together to provide caring communities and safe places for youth, we can continue to create change in the world.

If you can, will you please join the effort to help? We are a Project of the Tides Center, a 501(3)(c) organization and your contribution will build the bridge we need to cross over during these challenging times. We hope you receive this request knowing how dearly we value your friendship and shared commitment to youth and healthy connections.

Donate on our website at https://www.girlscircle.com/expand_the_circle.aspx

Sincerely,

Giovanna & Beth and the Girls Circle/Council Team

LGBT Community, Girls Circle and The Council for Boys and Young Men

October is Diversity Awareness Month. Are you aware that “adolescents who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual are more than twice as likely as their heterosexual peers to be depressed and think about or attempt suicide”? See many LGBT safety and health-related stats and tips at: http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/adults/tip-sheets/tip-sheet-33.aspx

An issue facing legislative attention is H.R. 2262 – the Safe Schools Improvement Act, which extends and specifies categories of identity which are commonly targeted by bullying and harassment. It would name sexual orientation and sexual identity among other categories in which students are often harassed and which need protection under the law. For more information on this bill, see

http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/library/record/2432.html

So how are the needs of LGBT youth addressed by Girls Circle and The Council for Boys and Young Men?

Our number one goal is safety – physical, relational, cultural, psychological. This means that all participants of every Girls Circle… … …

FREE Public Conference Call on Girls Circle & The Council Tomorrow, Wednesday Oct 14th.

Every second Wednesday of each month, The Girls Circle Association is hosting two types of monthly teleconferences as follows:

Facilitator Support Circles – for those currently leading circles or councils or for those who wish to begin, we will host a “virtual” support circle for facilitators across the nation

Informational Gatherings – for those who wish to learn more specifically about the Girls Circle or Council for Boys & Young Men programs and how it can enhance their current programming.

Calls will be held on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. Both calls are at no cost!

JOIN THE CALL:
Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 432-1601
Participant Access Code: 933215#

Email us at info@girlscircle.com if you’d like to submit a topic or question that you’d like us to address on the call.
More Details:

Facilitator Support Circles
Second Wednesday of Each Month
1-2pm PST, 3-4pm CST, 4-5pm EST

This call will rotate between addressing Girls Circle and The Council for Boys and Young Men each month and is intended to be a support circle to adults currently running either or both of the two programs. See below for a schedule of topics for the rest of 2009 and mark your calendars.

• October 14th – The Council
  Topic: ACTIVE BOYS – HOW TO GET THEM TO ENGAGE IN COUNCIL
• November 11th – All Programs
  Topic: CONFLICT IN GROUPS
• December 9th – All Programs
  Topic: GETTING BUY-IN FROM YOUR COMMUNITY

Introduction to Girls Circle & The Council
Second Wednesday of Each Month
11am-12pm PST, 1-2pmCST, 2-3pm EST

This call is for the general public as an introduction to both Girls Circle and The Council. In addition to a Q&A period, we will be covering the following topics:

• What is The Council / Girls Circle?
• How it Works in Different Youth Serving Sectors, i.e. education, juvenile justice mental health, child welfare, community-based orgs
• Current Research Outcomes / Findings
• Methods of Implementation
• Funding

Please join us and the Girls Circle and Council for Boys & Young Men community on these informative and collaborative calls.

Talk to you soon!

- The Girls Circle Association Team

How to Engage Disconnected or Disinterested Girls

Recently we’ve made a slight but important revision to one aspect of our Girls Circle Facilitator Training –regarding managing challenging dynamics that show up in Girls Circle. We’re doing a similar piece in the facilitator training for The Council for Boys and Young Men.

Following a trainer’s demonstration role play, we are adding a task for participants to develop, write down, and then practice with a partner some verbal intervention regarding a challenging behavior. The verbal intervention is a communication that expresses kindness, acknowledgement, naming the dynamic observed, inviting discussion, taking the concern to the group for their input and how they can relate to that concern, and offering choices for participation even if limited. Or, any combination of these.

Kitty Tyrol, Senior Training Manager, made this addition… … …

Easing the Pain by Coming Together

Beth found an interesting article today in the Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090927150348.htm

Called “Pulling Together Increases Your Pain Threshold” whereby a study of an Oxford rowing team found that as boys worked together, they were able “to tolerate twice as much pain as when they trained on their own.” Further conclusions from the study indicated that “acting as a group and in close synchrony seems to ramp up pain thresholds’ and “this effect may underlie the experience of warmth and belonging that we have when we do activities like dancing, sports, religious rituals and other forms of communal exercises together. “

And of course, Girls Circles and Boys Councils. This study confirms how important and powerful community is and how the brain responds to an environment that promotes bonding and working together. From a female perspective… … …

Are We Women Happy Yet?

Maureen Dowd’s column in Saturday’s NY Times, Blue is the New Black
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20dowd.html?_r=1
tells us that according to the General Social Survey, women are less happy than before the 1970’s, and men feel better. But why?

Well, first let me ask a few questions about the survey, for example, how is “happiness” defined? What questions were asked? To whom? By whom? How representative were they? And if all that checks out, then let’s go ahead and ask why we might be generally less content than 40 years ago.

I bet a lot of this decline in happiness is related to economics, and a second influence being our inexperience and discomfort with the practice and power of taking care of ourselves.

Women have more educational and career choices in America than we did when I was in high school in the early 70’s, but due to economic policies that have favored… … …

How We Keep Our Cool

News from the U.S. Capitol to the MTV awards to the US Open Tennis Semi Finals this week has been all about people losing their cool and dissing each other – Joe Wilson screaming out “You Lie!” to President Obama; Kanye West taking the mic from Taylor Swift and saying Beyonce deserved Taylor’s award; and Serena Williams – the awesome Serena- goin’ off on the linewoman. Ouch!

Across the world, teens and kids are watching Americans forget to respect if they’re mad or disagree. And the media will profit handily by showing these scenes repeatedly.

I’m not making excuses for any of the people I mentioned above. However, “there but for the grace of God go I,” because I’m just as capable – and at times responsible- for losing my cool. I think we all are just as capable, if not always in… … …

On Miracles of Babies, and on Deep Criminal Justice System Flaws and Paradox

This past Friday my sister gave birth to a little girl. I arrived to see her just after her first bath and before she was swaddled and knit capped. OMG how beautiful!

What a miracle it is to see this new baby girl. She had me thinking about every new baby arriving this week on the planet.

What will be in store for each one? What steps are we taking now to create safe and healthy homes and neighborhoods, nutrition, water, medical care, relationships, education, economic sufficiency, and opportunity for them?

A FANTASTIC magazine named World Pulse oput of Portland, OR, is covering these questions through the eyes of the world’s women and girls.
You have to see their Summer/Fall 2009 issue, and … … …