First, the Seattle Girls School. SGS is special place. It has a great vibe. It is so similar to the Julia Morgan School for Girls. They are both schools that TRULY understand girls and empower them. Although the only teacher I had met  before was Trina, an art teacher that has since left SGS to get her masters in fine art, I immediately knew I had a good crew together for brainstorming about Girlworld and education outreach. I showed them the trailer and they GOT IT. Brenda, Rosetta, Wendy and Trina helped me come up with a big education outreach idea. This is how it went down.

First of all, they  got down and dirty with the social media idea. Some funders might get excited about social media in theory (it is so buzzy, right?), but do they really? How would using social media/ technology really work?  There is the logistics of access to technology and time zones. And then, what really would it accomplish? The SGS teachers pointed out that it could very well be a set up the most basic level of learning, comparing. This is low on the ladder of learning—comparing. If we hooked girls from HERE with girls from THERE, it would be all about WE do this and THEY do that.
But really, the more powerful lesson is how much girls have in common. Girls want to learn. They yearn to learn. They yearn to be independent. Brenda, a 6th grade teacher brought up that Shanta has what many girls want, to be independent. “If you are not going to take care of me, then I have to learn how to take care of myself.” She is defiant and is striving to be self-sufficient. Wendy also said about Shanta, she feels like her family has so many so kids, that they don’t care about her. This is a familiar feeling for many middle schoolers whether it be true or imaginary.

All the women said they have never used Social Media in their classrooms. Wendy, who is working closely with her students on a project with students in Rwanda (and taking them there next week? More on this in my next entry!) said the one time they tried to communicate with the Rwandan students via Skpye, it didn’t work. The time difference, technology and just shyness got in the way. Totally makes sense.

But the biggest thing, is why? Why have girls here communicate with girls there? What is the outcome?

Then I brought up what I got out of the Working Films Consultation with Robert West. I asked what if the film was a catalyst for getting girls from girls school all over Seattle together in order to create a girl-group call to action.

Rosetta put it like this:

Get the girls here to see their opportunity via their education on a personal level.
Then they can stand as allies with their fellow girl school peers to CALL ON LEADERS TO MAKE CHANGE!!! when it comes to girls education in the developing world.

Girlworld: Bringing together girls from girls school all over the country on a city wide basis to call on leaders to make a change.

Girlworld summit! (Girlworld, the name itself, just got cooler!!!!!)

What it looks like:

We makes friends with girls schools and orgs here in Seattle”
SGS, Forest Ridge, Girls, Inc., Reel Girls
We bring them together to the Central Cinema on a school day to watch Girlworld (I am thinking 7th and/or 8th graders). We open up a discussion about the film. Then we have activities about what to do. There is a whole curriculum around this day. Girls sit with girls from different schools. They brainstorm. They draw diagrams. They present. They write letters. They get fired up. We march on Olympia.

We do the same thing in the Bay Area including Girls Rock and Girls Moving Forward at Grand Lake movie theater.

But wait, there is more.  Sandra, the director of the Julia Morgan School for Girls and Ana, a JMSG  teacher, discussed the importance of context and build up for something like the Girlworld Summit. I hear that. Ana is currently working on 7th grade curriculum entitled Culture and Identity. Both of  them just returned from the National Coalition of Girls Schools Conference that focused primarily on social justice. WOW!

So what about this idea? This comes by way of my friend, consultant, hero, crush: Chris Boulton. What if students, from the beginning of the school year have pen pals? Pen pals from all over the developing world who are girls going to school— maybe a classroom sponsors a girl or a few girls and they write back and forth, old school, pen and paper kind of writing. This could be through an organization that has been sponsoring girls for years, like Plan International.

They girls bring the letters and pictures and information about their sponsees to the Girlworld summit. The girls meeting in the movie theatre for the first time will have a lot to share—a lot to talk about. Maybe also they have read Three Cups of Tea, excerpts from Half the Sky. They are prepared. Ready to form teams, delegations, Model UN style. They are ready to rumble and be heard.

One thing I definitely learned from teaching middle school girls:

they know how to get it done, you’ve just got to give them space to do it

Girlworld: The Summit: I know. It is big. A BIG IDEA, but also I think it is totally doable. Totally doable.

I think actually we should try out a mini-summit come fall. I am going to ask the Seattle Girls School teachers what they think about that?

This is getting exciting!!!

Your comments are invited. 

Watch this space for the announcement of our new wedding site and blog’s rollout.

For the best viewing experience, click on the little ‘expand’ symbol in the lower right corner of the viewing screen. This should give you a bigger window (or take you to the Vimeo page, where you can get a bigger viewing pane).

Watch, won’t you?

The Little Sisters Fund (raiser) from NonFiction Media on Vimeo.

This half hour documentary shows a day in the life of three Nepalese girls —Shanta, Pragya and Karuna. Their stories give context to the plight of women in Nepal and the invaluable role education plays in ending the cycle of female oppression. 
Three was funded by the nonprofit The Little Sisters Fund. For more information or to give a donation:
littlesistersfund.org.

Three: Impressions from the Struggle for Girls’ Education from NonFiction Media on Vimeo.

We’d love to hear your thoughts: How’d we do?

Now, I’m not one of those design people that eat sleep and breathe logos. But I notice. 

I like the old (i.e., most recent previous) Pepsi logo, insofar as this kind of thing is important to me. 

Simple. Clean. Iconic. There’s a big neon one in Seattle I have long dug.

“What’s the new logo look like?” Amy says. 

“Now it kind of looks like that Obama circle thing.”

“Hmm.” She says. Today Amy says, “Hey, come look at this…”, calling me around to her computer, the YouTube below cued up.

“Hmm indeed,” says I.

Coincidence?

Looking at the video above, I’m already kind of annoyed about this kind of presentation. It’s kind of been done, right? But that doesn’t stop me being curious. Will it actually DO anything? Will people submit? Will people view the movies? 

Given that a major motivator behind this would seem to be to get lots of faces looking at screens with Pepsi’s smart, Obamarific new logo, I wonder how closely the content will be monitored.

On our first day with Shanta, as we had with most of the other girls, we noticed that along with the pop singers and movie stars she had on her wall–there were snapshots from America. We suspected (and she confirmed) that these Friendly, nondescript looking foreigners on her wall were her sponsors. 

We looked a little closer, and–well I was actually reminded of this story a couple days ago when I ran across this posting on a stranger’s blog…. Read down a little and you’ll pick up the thread of this story (then come back here, cause it’s not over.) 

Or, if you can’t be bothered to click through, long story short: the sponsors are the parents of Chris F. a friend we knew when we were teaching in Ecuador. And we knew because we saw our old colleague in the pictures. 

In this photo, Chris is in the snap of people on the stairs, next to the older couple (his parents) dancing. You can click on it then zoom in to view in more detail.

Our email to Chris was in hopes of letting his family know the girl they sponsor now knows not just one, but two random (and randomly connected) sets of Americans. And Chris’s cousin, Suzanne (who’d set in motion Chris’s mom’s sponsoring Shanta by telling stories of the time she spent with ‘her’ sponsoree girl on a trip to Nepal)… well naturally Suze got wind of the chance encounter, and that’s how it came to be posted on her blog.

Well, when I came across this post on Suzanne’s blog, I made a comment, and she happened to be traveling through Seattle. She had a few minutes between the bus and the train, and we met up at a coffeeshop downtown.

I brought her a picture of Rakshya, the girl she sponsors, from a day we spent filming some of the graduates doing mentorship and tutoring in a school. This is actually a remarkable and wise aspect of the Little Sisters Fund program, but I’ll save that for another post.

We had a great conversation. Right here and now I want to invite anyone who sponsors a girl through the Little Sisters Fund to drop us a note. Chances are pretty good we met and photographed the girl whose education you’re supporting. We would love to meet you and deepen the connection, as we did with Suzanne and Rakshya and Shanta and the Friendly family.