Why USA
Girls Who Lead Become Women Who Lead
One critical lesson WCI has learned regarding women’s civic participation worldwide is the importance of reaching women at an early age and recruiting young leaders to campaign and advocate at the grassroots level. Mentors, leadership trainings and creative approaches are needed to increase youth participation all over the globe.
Our Work in the USA
Global Advocacy and Leadership Series (GALS):
In 2009, WCI created the GALS program to bring its successful international curricula home to Philadelphia high school students at Freire Charter School, World Communications Charter School, and Eastern University Academy Charter School. The goal of the GALS program is to increase students’ ability to lead change in their own communities. This is done through skill-building in community leadership, advocacy, activism, global awareness, financial literacy, public speaking and networking.
Through the program, WCI facilitates workshops with 25 to 30 adolescent girls, selected for their potential leadership qualities. The girls commit to participate in the program by regularly attending Saturday workshops and developing and implementing their own advocacy campaign.
For each session, WCI invites local professionals to train and coach the program participants in:
- Global advocacy and activism
- Media outlets and messaging
- Public speaking and presentation skills
- Resource management and planning
Using what they learn from these practitioners, participants work in teams to choose a pressing issue to address in their own community and develop and implement an advocacy campaign around it. At the end of the program, the girls present their work to their community, family and peers.
Other Work in the Philadelphia Area:
WCI also does outreach work with middle school, high school, university students as well as the general Philadelphia community. We have conducted workshops and presented to various groups throughout the Philadelphia area.
Our Impact in the USA
The 2011 GALS program included 17 participants in the Saturday workshop series and 10 Advocacy Club members. This past year, several groups presented their campaigns at other schools in the Philadelphia area, developing interactive workshops about discrimination and self-esteem for more than 200 middle school students in North and Southwest Philadelphia. Other groups created Facebook pages and Youtube channels, making videos and messages about teen dating abuse and self respect aimed at their peers. The girls designed and implemented two separate school wide surveys about teen dating abuse and bullying, reaching 190 students. These survey results were complied into graphs and disseminated to the entire school through a five piece PSA and school newspaper article. With the wide reach of social media technologies, these campaigns have reached hundreds of other youth within the Philadelphia area and beyond.
