Activism Log #6

Activism:

My activism this week included attending a Big Sister meeting and a Facilitator meeting. My group members and myself are getting ready to bring our project to a close for this semester, so we are working on this semester's scrapbook and editing the videos so we can put them up on Youtube. The Twitter is up to date with only one week left worth of tweets from our Littles. We have not gotten enough submissions for our 'zine this semester, so we will be creating just one 'zine overall from both the Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 terms, unless the Littles bring a lot of submissions to the final Alumnae event this Saturday, Nov. 19th. I am still working on our UCF Day lesson and researching different possibilities for improving it and making it more accessible to all of the girls, and not just those girls in our group that are bullied.

Reflection:

This week's reading of "Girl Talk" made me strongly consider the effects of socioeconomic status upon girls' ideas of leadership. As they surveyed 150 girls from "high need" areas with open-ended questions about leadership that allowed them to use their own language in their answers, it showed that informal leadership was a type of leadership that they definitely valued, even if they didn't have the same language as we do to express it (Shinew and Jones 55). Other surveys that did not have accessible language that the girls could understand completely were difficult for the girls to identify with in their own lives. In coming up with a more accessible bullying lesson for the girls in which we hope to incorporate more of their own voices in response to our open-ended questions, we hope that the girls can take what they are learning and recognize its existence already in their lives. "[The surveyed girls'] emphasis on informal leadership roles and more feminine definitions of what it means to be a good leader implies that much of the formal curriculum and language used to cultivate leadership among these groups fails to resonate with their lived experiences" (Shinew 65).

Reciprocity:

This week's reading and research has taken me back to my own girlhood and has led me to consider all of the ways in which my first-world, white, upper middle-class, educated, Catholic upbringing (among many many other facets of my life) affected how I approached leadership then and how I approach leadership now. I consider how in middle school if I didn't win the elections for Class Mayor I wasn't a good leader, when in fact I was a great leader because of my informal leadership acts like loving my little brother or helping the librarian in the school library. I am coming to recognize now what the expectations of leaders were, and that these often transactional expectations that may have limited the type of leader I always saw myself as even just up to a year or so ago. I can appreciate how I have arrived in the place I am, today, and I can understand both the strengths, weaknesses, and endless conundrums that make up the conditions that shaped the leader I am and the leadership qualities I value.

Works Cited

Shinew, Dawn M. and Deborah T. Jones "Girl Talk: Adolescent Girls' Perceptions of Leadership." Geographies of Girlhood: Identities In-Between. Mahway: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005: 55-65. Print.

Activism Log #5

Activism:

This week, I updated the Twitter account with the girls' tweets. I printed up and passed out reminders for the girls to turn in more submissions to the 'zine. I facilitated at the Little meeting and helped conduct a lesson on body image. We introduced a new activity called "You're A Masterpiece" and it stimulated a great deal of excitement with the girls, which was, in turn, very exciting for the rest of us. The photos for the scrapbook pages have been developed, so sometime soon my groupmates and I will be coming together to work on the scrapbook, our Service Learning reflection paper, and the 'zine and videos.

Reflection:

In my previous activism log I talked about how I learned that compromise can be a very effective course when working with girls and asking them to acquire and maintain their own spaces with their own agencies. This week, however, seeing a successful bi-monthly publication of a magazine by girls and for girls opened my ideas to an even more expansive sense of what girls can do with their agency. On the non-numbered page directly before page one in this particular issue of New Moon Girls, it reads "New Moon Girls is the original girl-centered media" (Gruver). Finding new ways for the girls to have complete control over certain aspects of their participation in the program became a realistic consideration the way talking about it in a classroom couldn't let it. It also validated our own endeavors for the girls in our Service Learning Project. Employing a shared-power system that is less shared with adults and more empowered by the girls was a level and caliber of work I saw this week that I aspire to reach someday in my future activism.

Reciprocity:

Having read New Moon Girls--a magazine for girls and by girls--I thought it tied in directly with what my group has been working on specifically for our Service Learning project. We are having the girls create a 'zine, and asking the girls to contribute to the Twitter account and the Youtube videos completely of their own volition, inspiration, and execution. The Nov/Dec 2011 issue of this magazine was an excellent example to look at when considering showings of success in girls creating and maintaining their own spaces through public and massive mediums.

Works Cited

Gruver, Nancy, ed. New Moon Girls. Nov. 2011. Web.

Activism Log #4

Activism:

This week, we have received our first few submissions for the 'zine from several YWLP Littles. I began compiling the scrapbook pages that the Littles created on UCF Day. My groupmates and myself attended a Big Sister meeting on Wednesday and last night attended a fundraiser night at Applebee's where 10% of each check would go to YWLP. My groupmates and I have also gotten together to discuss changes to next semester's continuation of our service-learning project with several large changes and multiple minor tweaks. Next week we will be handing out reminders to the Littles that we want their submissions for the 'zine because we only have a handful of submissions as of yet.

Reflection:

What I have most gained from our Service-Learning project so far is a greater understanding for what it is to compromise and I have become greatly interested in implementing a shared power system with girls, either in this particular chapter of YWLP or in another girls' leadership organization that I will become a part of wherever I end up. "While this shift is by no means absolute, it does create openings for marginalized groups to participate more fully in leadership processes" (MacNeil 36). This can most specifically be applied to our approach with working with the girls to hopefully have more say in lesson plans and letting them help us decide what to include in our program.

Reciprocity:

As I said in my Reflection section, I have learned a great deal about compromise. Though youths are often mistaken for immature or unhelpful children, the fact is they are the ones that hold the key to unleashing and developing their own development most efficiently. My adulthood does not grant me infallibility, and so compromising my plans and hopes with the girls who also have ideas and dreams to combine a greater lesson plan and a more successful farther-reaching program seems like a positive direction to go in.

Works Cited

MacNeil, Carole A. "Bridging Generations: Applying "Adult" Leadership Theories to Youth Leadership Development." New Directions for Youth Development 2006.109 (2006): 27-43. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Nov. 2011.

Girls Rock Movie Quiz

First of all I loved the film. Any program that is created for girls to help them expand their conceptions of themselves and pushes them to be the amazing girls they are will always have a place in my heart.

I was most intrigued by how they constructed the spaces for the girls to lead and how they also constructed the girls’ leadership within those spaces. This camp seemed to go farther than YWLP in the sense that the girls had more agency and free-reign when to came to the decision-making processes. It was still a program based on community, encouragement, and girl power, just like YWLP, but this was a space where there were fewer guidelines and there was more freedom. The girls here were receiving more suggestions than they were receiving guidelines.

The girls formed bands, created band names, wrote music and lyrics, and then performed all on their own. There were teachers to help the girls tackle the basics of different instruments, and there were facilitators assigned to each band to make sure everyone in each group was being heard, but the girls had ultimate power when it came to how they were going to express themselves through their music. It showed me the possibilities past even the shared-power system to a place where girls seemed to have even more power than adults. It was certainly not as chaotic as I think I would have originally anticipated had I known more about the system of power within which the camp operates before watching the film.

It definitely made me reconsider the Ophelia discourse we’ve been reading and talking about. Especially after having discussed the articles in class today, it made me realize that perhaps even though a moment-of-intervention seems very pertinent to every girl’s success as a leader, there is always room for more compromise, especially within whatever power system is already in place while working with the girls. Letting the girls work with girls for the furthering of the girls’ movement is a great first step.

Word Count: 340

Community Engagement 2

Emily Vrotsos

Meredith Tweed

WST 4021

25 October 2011

Community Engagement: Women and Leadership Annual Forum

Ambassador Harriet Thomas, Director of the Global Perspectives Department introduced Dr. Samantha Nutt, the featured speaker. Thomas explained that the forum began five years ago to focus on women’s roles. Thomas shared that Nutt was a registered physician who worked first in Baidoa “The City of Death,” Somalia for UNICEF in the mid 1990s.

Dr. Nutt explained that her first book Damned Nations covers the last 16 years of her life at work in war-torn countries and an evaluation of how we work on war. Her mantra is: “people power, politics, and change.” She stated, “It won’t be enough for you to simply be better. We must redefine success in human terms; human-centered achievable values.” Somalia changed her view about her relationship to the world. When she first arrived she wondered what other people could do, but by the time she left she looked at it as what more could she do. She ascribed the title of story-teller to herself and how she gives presentations and asked the audience to imagine themselves in each anecdote that she told us.

One quarter of a million people died of famine, war, and diseases in Baidoa after health services literally stopped just on the heels of the Rwandan genocide. Somalia was drowning in weaponry with no functioning government. Children had not been to school but had fought and killed. Nutt said that the problem must be understood and acted upon in a global context. The billions of dollars spent on weapon development contracts every year is unsustainable in any economy and we should instead invest those dollars into development projects.

Possibly the worst place for women to live in the world is the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where the “War Against Women” is raging. Rape with extreme violence, gang rape, and amputations of women’s anatomy all play along the lines that rape is a crime of power and opportunity. There is very little stigma in the Congo against rapist but incredible stigma against those who have been raped. There is an international and national struggle to control the Congo’s vast resources and there have been mappings done that show that the closer to the mining areas one goes, the greater incidents of rape with extreme violence, and so people must make informed and ethical choices on a global level in a global context.

Nutt gave us four points to affect social change. The first point was to gain knowledge and information, often in the form of institutionalized education. Her second point was that individuals should make small contributions on a regular basis to development projects, such as programs of education or skills and employment training programs. Her third point was that we must be socially responsible consumers and have responsible investment practices. We should choose companies that are behaving ethically, such as those who follow their supply chains. Nutt’s fourth point was that life and loss are just as relevant “here” as it is “there.”

The talk ended with Nutt and audience members conducting a Question/Answer session. Nutt recommended many social development websites and relief organization websites. She also provided suggestions for traveling and participating as a volunteer or activist in a war-torn country.

Word Count: 532

To Learn and to Serve:

Emily Vrotsos

Meredith Tweed

WST 4021

30 September 2011

Girls and Leadership Service-Learning Proposal

Community Partner

Community Partner: Young Women Leaders Program
Address: 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816
Contact: 407-823-6502

Mission Statement: “The Young Women Leaders Program is a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program . . . YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls. In mentoring pairs and small groups of Big and Little Sisters, participants focus on learning competence and autonomy, independent thinking, empowerment, self-esteem, and encouraging girls to think about their futures.” (http://womensstudies.cah.ucf.edu/ywlp/)

Political and/or Social Basis for Organization: As stated above, the basis for the organization is to promote positive self-image and encourage leadership skills in young girls who are at an important part of their developmental stages (http://womensstudies.cah.ucf.edu/ywlp/).

Community Needs: Members of the YWLP will benefit from extra assistance organizing and running alumni events and UCF day in the form of running lesson plans and engaging the girls in activities that encourage and acknowledge how they are leaders in their everyday lives.

Memorandum

TO: Meredith Tweed

FROM: Emily Vrotsos

DATE: September 30, 2011

RE: Proposal to Write a Feasibility Report for a Service Learning Project

Need of the Community Partner:

Youth leadership is highly undervalued in American society. While complicates the leadership efforts of adolescents in general, it is especially relevant when considering girls’ leadership. With only a few role models, either “real world” or fictional, of women and/or girls in positions of leadership to look up to, and with their own attempts at leadership so often discouraged or ignored, girls may find it difficult to view themselves as leaders. Apart from its potential long-term effects on the emergence of future women leaders, this also has more immediate short-term effects, including possible struggles with self-esteem, self-confidence in themselves and their work, and other issues of self-image and conduct that may go underdeveloped in girls who are so infrequently encouraged to think critically about and give voice to their own experiences and decisions.

Plan Proposal:

As part of working with YWLP, an organization focused on helping girls develop and use leadership skills, our project will address much the same need. In response to the specific needs we have so far seen demonstrated by this semester’s group of little sisters, we have shifted the focus of our work with the girls to more effectively address bullying. We hope to support the girls in exploring ways to respond to bullying (including cyber-bullying) of themselves and others, and possible ways to creatively raise others’ awareness of the bullying problem, on- and offline.

Through the creation of a ’zine, a Twitter account, a scrapbook, and two videos by the middle school girls in YWLP and a anti-bullying lesson on UCF Day and an academic blog by our service-learning group, we will be meeting the needs of our community partner. This approach will allow the girls to create and have agency in their own spaces and will allow our group to tackle the topic of bullying directly by engaging the girls to find their own positive leadership influence in their everyday activities and also in technological endeavors.

Rationale for Women’s Studies:

This project is relevant to our Girls and Leadership course, as well as the Girls Studies movement, because it is a project geared directly toward having girls create and develop their own spaces where their voices can be heard and where they can move themselves forward. "All teenagers can learn about leadership and define for themselves what it means" (van Linden and Fertman 6). It is important that these girls understand they are young leaders in their day-to-day lives, and that leadership is not reserved for adults or for those in formal leadership positions. Leaders are those "...who think for themselves, communicate their thoughts and feelings to others, and helps others understand and act on their own beliefs; they influence others in an ethical and socially responsible way" (van Linden 17). When the girls create their own spaces on the internet and with other forms of technology and media they will have the opportunity to recognize and then utilize the leadership skills which they already possess, and in doing so they will be able to further develop other leadership qualities as their years and experience progress.

Action:

In order to fulfill our service-learning requirement, our group has several different components that we will be implementing as a work-in-progress throughout the semester. Apart from working with the girls, we will also be creating an academic blog to which we will be documenting our progress, including our activism logs and other conclusions we will be drawing as the semester continues. We will be attending the weekly meetings and participating on the weekend alumni events.

The largest portion of our project will be compiling a ’zine wholly developed and executed by the middle school girls participating in YWLP. The girls will also be decorating a scrapbook to document their progression throughout this semester’s service-learning project, which will be an ongoing part of their YWLP experience. We will also be engaging the girls on the internet by creating spaces for them on Twitter and Youtube. A Twitter account will be set up by our service-learning group and we will post thoughts the girls turn in on slips of paper at the end of every meeting. The girls will also be creating a YWLP promotional video and an independent video of their own creative design. On UCF Day we will be conducting a lesson on bullying, with a section on cyber bullying. We will also be working on the scrapbook, voting on the ’zine’s title, and filming the videos.

Timeline:

Our completed project will be submitted on 29 November 2011. Given YWLP’s schedule, our in-field work will extend a few days beyond this date; however, the bulk of our research will be completed by 17 November, and the major creative components of our project will be ready for our in-class presentation of it on 8 December.

9/23/2011—First Group Meeting (Big sisters met up and created a rough plan)

9/25/2011—Alumnae Potluck

10/5/2011—Big Sister Meeting

10/12/2011— Little Sister Meeting

10/15/2011—UCF Day

10/19/2011—Big Sister Meeting

10/23/2011—Alumnae Nursing Home Visit

10/26/2011—Little Sister Meeting

11/2/2011—Big Sister Meeting

11/6/2011—Alumnae Mud Walk

11/9/2011—Little Sister Meeting

11/13/2011—Alumnae Soup Kitchen Volunteering

11/16/2011—Big Sister Meeting

11/19/2011—Alumnae Picnic in the Park

11/25/2011—Finish compiling the ’zine using girls’ submissions and publish (by combination of printed copies for the girls and PDF for the bigs) to distribute at the last Littles meeting.

11/29/2011—Submit final project report, including creative components (’zine, scrapbook pages, video made with the girls, etc.)

11/30/2011—Little Sister Meeting

12/8/2011—In-class presentation of project

Works Cited

"UCF: CAH: Young Women Leaders Program." UCF: CAH: Women's Studies Program: Mentoring Programs for Faculty. University of Central Florida, 2010. Web. 28 Sept. 2011.

Van Linden, Josephine A., and Carl I. Fertman. Youth Leadership: A Guide to Understanding Leadership Development in Adolescents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998. Print.

Word Count: 924

To My Fellow Leaders, With Love:

My name is Emily. I was born and raised for the first 10 years of my life on a small farm in Hugo, Minnesota, and in the year I turned 11 my family moved to a small farm in Summerfield, Florida. I don't really remember my life in Minnesota, and so many important milestones in my life happened in Florida; when someone asks where my hometown is I will always say Ocala. I attended school in Ocala, I swam on the year-round team in Ocala, and Ocala is where some of my favorite memories took place.

I have a huge family. Both sides of my family are practicing Roman Catholics... and, evidently, neither set of my grandparents believed in any form of birth control. My mom's side is largely Scottish and Irish, and I could describe every one of them as loud and proud. My dad's side is half Greek and half Hungarian, and, before you ask, yes, family reunions and holidays are exactly like what you saw in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. My family is enormous and obnoxious and I wouldn't trade them for anything. Sometimes it feels empty without my grandparents, who all passed by the time I was 10, but we all have a little bit of each of them in our bodies and in our mannerisms; I have my Granddad's eyes, my Grandmother's height, my Grandfather's curly hair, and my Gamma's talent for music. In my family, wherever you go, whatever you do, there's always somebody who wants to know how you are and somebody else who just woke up that morning with the feeling that they need to call and tell you they love you.

My immediate family consists of my mom, my dad, and my brother, who is three years and nine months my junior. My mom raised me to pursue what I love and not to take any shit from people. My dad raised me to be compassionate and determined. They both raised me to be a powerful woman with intellect and a love for life.

My little brother is always a light in my life. We have always been incredibly close and he was there for me when a lot of other people were not. He is exceptionally intelligent, kind-hearted, and optimistic. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a better person than I am. He is also gay. Nicholas came out to me this past April, and he is so much happier now that it's out in the open. He has created a Youtube channel to spread his own version of the message that it's okay to be gay. If you want to check it out, watch his first video:

If you want to see more of his videos, search for his channel on Youtube: lovehopeandkindness

This is my last year of undergrad at UCF and it has been a wonderful experience. When I graduate in May, I will have earned my Bachelor's in English Lit, minors in Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Women's Studies, and Writing, and a certificate in Service Learning.

My views on activism and feminism tend to favor this approach: I believe that our society is definitely in need of revolutionary changes to demolish our systems of discrimination and oppression. I believe that education should be the first step in that revolution. My dad always told me (and my Granddad always told my mom) that education is something no one can ever take away from me. My parents always pushed me to educate myself, to search for answers to my questions, and to never ever stop questioning. They remind my brother and me from time to time that once we become too complacent and stop asking questions, that's when we make ourselves most vulnerable and we are at our weakest in regard to being taken advantage of. We're not going to make this a better world if we stop questioning and demanding answers.

One type of leadership I do now is working with the Young Women Leaders Program. I have been a Big Sister for two semesters, and this semester will be my first semester as a Facilitator. We promote competence, autonomy, and connection in local middle school girls of Seminole County. It is the most rewarding thing I have ever done, and I hope to stay involved after I graduate or to create a similar program wherever I move after graduation. My brother loves everything he hears about YWLP, and he really wants to begin a Young Men Leaders Program wherever he attends college next year. (Two sibling activists!!)

What I h0pe to learn about girls and leadership this semester is how to gender the arguments about girls' rights, and how to use this gendering of arguments to create a greater understanding of girls and how to use their uniqueness as a tool to further the girl studies movement.

I have read, understand, and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocols.