Girls'Club
Girls taking their space!
Girls’ Club is our after school violence prevention and empowerment program for 11 to 13 years old girls in Verdun, Quebec. Combining popular education and arts-based activities, the girls explore themes related to body image, self-esteem, violence, dating, pop culture, the media, and more. Girls’ Club provides a safe space for girls to come together, have fun, chat, ask questions, and be themselves!
Girls’ Club is an empowerment and violence-prevention program for girls, based on the Girls Action Foundation approach. And it’s a lot of fun!
The program engages girls in popular education workshops, discussions, physical movement, arts-based activities and games designed to:
- Build girls’ self-awareness and self-esteem;
- Increase girls’ critical thinking skills and ability to act on issues of violence and discrimination;
- Connect girls to people and resources in their community engage girls in community action projects that they develop themselves.
Our approach is participatory, with girls actively involved in setting the ground rules for the group and giving input into programming. Innovations are always happening in response to the needs of the girls.
- Program themes and topics include: creative self expression (poetry writing, theatre, sewing and crafts, ‘zine-making, video);
- Anti-violence workshops (assertiveness and self defense, anti-racism, bullying workshops, healthy communication skills);
- Active living (dance, sports, bike repair, body image, yoga, hiking);
- Community engagement (workshops on community and global issues such as consumerism, popular culture, media awareness, the environment);
- Serious topics are always balanced with light hearted activities that make us laugh and break down barriers.
Girls’ Club is facilitated by a skilled and enthusiastic team of women, made up of a program coordinator, facilitators and volunteers. Many of the workshops involve guests from the community who share their passion and expertise with the girls in areas such as theatre, self-defense and yoga. Sometimes we invite community members, such as a young woman who was a teenage mother, to share their experiences and discuss life choices with the girls in a realistic but non-judgmental way.
The program applies a popular education approach that, for each issue or topic, starts from girls’ lived experiences, shares knowledge, builds skills, develops critical thinking and moves into action. The Girls Action Foundation also uses an intersecting feminist framework that recognizes and takes into account the multiple and intersecting impacts of policies and practices on different groups of girls because of their race, class, ability, sexuality, gender identity, religion, culture, refugee or immigrant status, or other status.
