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
