N. Shore Women’s Centre hosts free summer workshop for girls
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Updated: June 30, 2009 3:51 PM
The North Shore Women’s Centre will host a free six-week workshop for teenaged girls this summer to promote self esteem and healthy relationships.
Called “Strong Choices, Real Power,” the weekly sessions combine theatre, music and art with tough but pervasive topics for teen girls. Centre head Michelle Dodds says the group will discuss body issues, self-expression, healthy relationships and self-assertion.
“They’re going to walk away with a new skill set, about walking through the world with a sense of a strong sense of self and ability to interact with people from a place of empowerment,” explained group facilitator Anna Soole.
Soole, who works with violence prevention and community outreach programs for youth around Metro Vancouver – including the YouthCo AIDS Society and SAFETEEN – says she focuses on arts-based social justice outreach in her work with young people.
She says much teen outreach centres around “being in touch with the messages from your head, your heart, your spirit and your body – knowing when they’re not congruent.”
She says girls in the Strong Choices course often focus on fostering “a strong sense of self and ability to interact with people from a place of empowerment.” The course often helps young women investigate how images of women in popular media impact self esteem.
A past workshop group in the centre produced a youth-centred magazine, said Dodds, where young women explored the themes of the course in photos, essays and prose.
Dodds said the young women often stay in touch after the group concludes.
“Sometimes in schools it’s hard to talk about the issues,” Dodds said. “There’s already a certain dynamic going on.” She said the workshops help girls “get over the blocks that keep people from communicating and chatting with each other.”
Dodds said the group is open to girls 15 to 17 years old from across the North Shore.
For more information visit northshorewomen.ca or to register, call 604-984-6009.
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