Strong, smart, and bold girls: the Girls Incorporated[R] approach to education.

• Author: Nicholson, Heather Johnston

1. GIRLS INCORPORATED--HISTORY, SCOPE, DEMOGRAPHICS

   Girls Incorporated[R] ("Girls Inc.") is a national, nonprofit youth organization that "inspires all girls to be strong, smart and bold." (1) The organization's vision is to empower girls and help create an equitable society. Its roots go back to the Industrial Revolution when young women left their family farms to work in the textile mills of the northeastern United States. Many young women would go to Girls Clubs after work. (2) Eventually, Girl's Clubs became places where women could safely learn practical skills. In 1945 fourteen charter Girls Clubs joined together to form a national organization. (3) Its original name, Girls Clubs of America, was changed to Girls Incorporated in 1990. (4)

   In 2000, Girls Inc. programs reached more than 740,000 girls and young women ages six through eighteen. (5) Over one hundred affiliates, including YWCAs and community coalitions, provide programs to girls and young women in over 1,100 program sites. (6) A vast majority of these programs are conducted at schools during and after the school day. (7) Program areas include science, media criticism, leadership, and substance use prevention. (8)

   Girls Inc. is proud to have achieved impressive diversity amongst its participants. According to the 2000 annual survey of Girls Inc. affiliates, 70% of participants are girls of color, 48% are African American, 30% are White, and 15% are Latina. (9) About 75% come from families with incomes of $25,000 a year or less, and about 40% live with two parents. (10) Nearly every Girls Inc. affiliate includes girls and young women with disabilities. (11) Many affiliates welcome girls who are lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning their sexual preference.

   Girls Inc. is governed by a national council. Each member organization has three votes. Each national board member, each past chair of the national board, and the current President/CEO has one vote. (12) At Girls Inc., member organizations are separate independent nonprofit organizations, such as Girls Incorporated of Metropolitan Dallas; Girls Incorporated of Shelbyville and Shelby County in Indiana; and Girls Incorporated of the Greater Capital Region in New York. The Council meets biennially to set overall policy. Girls Inc. also has a national board, which meets three or four times a year to decide on policy issues and ensure fiscal accountability. The president/CEO of Girls Inc. reports to the national board and leads a national staff of about sixty-five employees. The cooperation between Girls Inc. and its affiliates is very close. Affiliate representation is involved in both the national board, as well as through joint program development, research, training, and technical assistance within the Girls Inc. movement.

2. EDUCATION IN THE OUT OF SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT--THE FREEDOM NOT TO GRADE

   Girls Inc. programming developed in the tradition of the great national youth organizations. Its programs were offered primarily after school, on weekends, and during the summer. Considered recreational and enriching, the programs were intended to supplement the lives of young people who were doing well, and shore up the support systems of young people whose families and neighborhoods were struggling. (13) In this context, the youth organization is free to follow the interests and preferences of young people and their parents. Girls Inc. is not required to issue credentials to progress the student to another grade level or to give tests over the mastery of required subjects. In general, the organization tries to avoid being "too schooly." Girls Inc. does this so that girls will want to join in our activities.

   1. Fun and Friends, Voice and Choice Come First

      Girls Inc. programming draws heavily from the experience of its affiliates. By the 1980s, their grassroots, homegrown approach to programming was a great source of pride for the organization. The responsibility of each organization was to see that the staff offered girls a mix of sports, field trips, photography, cooking, career exploration, adventure, and community service to keep them coming back. (14) Often girls were involved in the planning and some served on advisory committees or the board of directors. Many girls grew up at Girls Inc. in their after school hours, while others visited a few times a week or a month. The atmosphere was lighthearted but purposeful.

   2. The Foundation of Interactive Learning--Early Learning Theory, Social Group Work, and Adult Learning Theory

      From the beginning, Girls Inc. programming has been hands-on, interactive, and centered on the interests of the girls who participate. A spirit of wonder and discovery borrowed from early learning theory pervades the programs for younger girls. (15) Whether the activity is unstructured play, structured games, cooking sessions, or art projects, the focus is on enjoying the process. Girls Inc. celebrates fun and learning without assigning scores or dividing girls into categories of achievement.

      Many of the people who work at Girls Inc. have a degree in social work or a background in social group work. (16) A group worker learns early on that it is her job to facilitate the development of the individuals and to foster bonding within the group. (17) Rather than instruct, or impart a body of knowledge, the group worker draws knowledge from the participants and helps them pull together to achieve a mutual goal. (18) The facilitator brings expertise in developing the participants' social skills and in helping clarify their perspectives and values. (19) After setting clear goals for the workshop, the facilitator provides small groups or pairs with resources to explore, roles to play, and decisions to make. Once again, the focus is on the goal and process of learning rather than the mastery of particular text; the adults are charged with making the enterprise fun, engaging, and worthwhile. This process-oriented, interactive learning characterizes the Girls Inc. approach, in both training adults to work with girls and educating girls in the Girls Inc. setting. Everyone is presumed and encouraged to be an active learner with much to contribute.

      The process-oriented approach to education is further reinforced in Girls Inc. through the use of adult learning theory as the basis for workshops offered to paid program staff and volunteer trustees. (20) Adult learning theory is based on the premise that adults are busy people with well-formed habits and styles of learning. (21) Often one person creates the "script" and resources for a training workshop, which another person implements. The task for both the designer and the facilitator is to illuminate for participants the relevance of the material to the participant's own goals, and to elicit the knowledge, wisdom, and values the participants already bring to the topic. Each activity is designed to complete the cycle of learning that ends with reflection and application to the participant's own context. The design and implementation are fine-tuned on the basis of advance knowledge about each participant's background and experience and on the basis of individual and group dynamics during the workshop.

3. CORE PROGRAM TASK FORCE AND THE PROGRAM PLANNING GUIDE

   In the early 1980s Girls Inc., then Girls Clubs of America, acquired its first national director of program development. (22) Not long after, experienced executive directors in Girls Inc. affiliates began to lobby the program director for a coherent national program that all affiliates could implement, beginning with a survey of the similarities of programming in affiliates nationwide. (23) Around 1985, the Core Program Task Force was formed with representatives from national and local staffs and boards. (24) The task force met over an eighteen month period to develop policies and written documents based on those policies. (25) The group modeled their programming on a pyramid, with purpose and philosophy at the top, approach in the middle, and curricula and evaluation at the base. (26) The work of the core program task force, published first in 1987 as Going Places and now as the Program Planning Guide, (27) anchors the Girls Inc. program in development, implementation, and training.

   1. Feminist Philosophy--Social Change and the Similarities and Differences Among Girls

      The core program task force deliberately used the word "feminist" to describe ideal program staff members but otherwise avoided labels in favor of clear descriptions of goals and beliefs. (28) For one thing, the word "feminist" only resonated with some members of the task force: primarily middle-class White women struggling for rights in the labor force. From the beginning at Girls Inc., the sense of equity and fairness went beyond gender to include race, class, culture, religion, and language. The philosophy of Girls Inc. programming resonates with the feminism conceptualized by bell hooks:

      [Feminism] is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western Culture on various levels--sex, race and class, to name a few--and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society, so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires. (29) Certainly hooks' emphasis on eradicating the ideology of domination in favor of the self-development of people characterizes the writing and practice within Girls Inc. The emphasis hooks places on economic transformation has been more problematic for Girls Inc. as will be later illustrated. (30)

      The purpose of Girls Inc. programming stated in the 1993 edition of the Program Planning Guide is "to enable girls to be strong, smart and bold and achieve their full potential. Further, Girls Incorporated programming builds girls' capacity for confident and responsible adulthood, economic independence and personal fulfillment." (31) The Guide states that "Girls Incorporated believes that all girls are...