2002 Celebration
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2002 Celebration |
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Programs Girls’ and Young Women’s Initiative Program Descriptions Girls’ and Young Women’s Initiative Contact: The Grand Street Settlement’s Girls’ and Young Women’s Initiative, in New York City, sponsors Lower East Side girls in their development into caring, responsible, healthy young women. It empowers young women to make healthy life choices through education, skill building, mentoring, and related youth development activities. This comprehensive youth development model provides a powerful, alternative option to the influences of peer pressure, gender bias, and the media. Within its holistic framework, girls envision a future with limitless possibilities and develop the skills necessary to achieve their dreams. The initiative was formed as part of a series of converging interests and concerns expressed by Grand Street Settlement staff, members of the executive leadership, and parents and girls from the community. A 1996 survey conducted of attitudes toward relationships among girls in Grand Street’s after-school, academic enrichment program. The results were disturbing: some indicated that girls felt that it was acceptable for a male companion or otherwise use violence in a relationship, and that women should play a submissive role in relationships with men. Meanwhile, another New York City after-school program began to advocate for a safe place where neighborhood girls could gather to participate in gender-specific programming. Finally, the staff recognized that after girls “aged out” of the academic enrichment program, around age 12, they were left to their own devices, and many of the girls began hanging out on the streets and engaging in otherwise unproductive activities. Today, the Girls’ and Young Women’s Initiative empowers young women to envision a healthy future through enrichment activities with the following objectives: to create a supportive environment for them to share their concerns, challenges, and dreams with caring adults and peers; foster participants’ academic achievement with tutoring and educational enrichment activities; increase participants’ knowledge of careers, especially nontraditional ones, available to women; foster participants’ leadership skills, civic responsibility, and commitment to their community; and provide participants with the information and skills to help them avoid teen pregnancy and adopt healthy behaviors. Each year the initiative directly serves about 100 young women from the Lower East Side, of which 60 percent are Latino, 35 percent are African American, and 5 percent Asian American. The initiative also reaches about 2,000 others through peer education, outreach, and theater presentations. Recruited through word-of-mouth, flyers posted in the community, and younger girls in the after-school academic enrichment program, each young woman participates in health education and discussion groups, in addition to choosing two enrichment activities. The initiative encourages girls to explore and envision themselves in nontraditional roles for women, such as CEOs, legislators, judges, physicians, and computer programmers. They are encouraged to develop competencies such as self-confidence, assertiveness, leadership abilities, and positive body image. Plaza Sesamo Contact Univision’s commitment is to provide Latinochildren with quality educational programming like Plaza Sésamo. With its national coverage of the Spanish-speaking audience, Univision brings this excellent program to children across the United States. In addition, in partnership with the Children’s Television Workshop, Univision has developed printed materials that bring Plaza Sésamo’s positive messages to the community through outreach activities by the 11 Univision Television Group stations, as well as selected PBS stations. Children’s Television Workshop is the producer of Sesame Street, the longest-running and most successful educational program in broadcast history. CTW produces Sesame Street in the United States, as well as several coproductions that serve over 40 countries. Plaza Sésamo is a coproduction between CTW and Televisa, the largest television broadcaster of Mexico. It features colorful muppet characters developed especially for this coproduction and incorporates an innovative educational curriculum focusing on social skills, health, hygiene, safety, and readiness skills such as counting and the alphabet. To extend Plaza Sésamo in the Latino community, Univision funded CTW’s Community Education Services Department to create appealing outreach materials for families. Through Univision’s $75,000 grant, the department created five family pamphlets that helped families with young children discuss what they saw on the show in a participatory and interactive manner. The pamphlets have suggestions and activities that families can implement with materials easily available in their homes. The pamphlets have been distributed through Univision affiliates and PBS affiliates that air the show. The outreach efforts have been national and effective. |