Strategies for finding Girl–Nurturing Societies if you can’t make a school
ARTEMIS
Artemis, Amazonian moon goddess, dog whisperer, hunter, and athlete. To her we can assign physical pursuits like sport, fitness, and outdoor adventure, as well as the psychological fitness that builds resilience, confidence, and strength of character. A haven in the Jungle… A place of great women, stories, knowledge, resources, oh the resources: One of the girl clients of Hardy Girls Healthy Women described it thus. This nonprofit is organized around leadership, social action, and social relevance for girls. It sponsors conferences for girls in grades five to eight and has a girls’ speakers bureau and an advisory board of girls. This advocacy group is worth investigating. It was co–created by Lyn Mikel Brown, professor of Education and Human Development, coauthor with Carol Gilligan of Meeting at the Crossroads, and coauthor with Sharon Lamb of a new book on media literacy, Packaging Girlhood (2006). Hardy Girls’s physical location is in Maine, but you can find them on the web.
www.hardygirlshealthywomen.org
Sweat It: Girls’ Sports Teams
Participation in sports provides an opportunity to be in an all–girls community; learn teamwork, discipline, and leadership; and become physically fit and body–aware. If your daughter doesn’t have a natural attraction to the grit and grime of the soccer field or the aggression of the volleyball game, experiment with nontraditional “sports” like yoga and fencing. A magazine designed to promote healthy activities for women can be found at the following website.
www.hersports.com
Tennis star and role model Billie Jean King founded a nonprofit organization to promote vitality through physical fitness.
www.womenssportsfoundation.org
All Girls’ Camps
Many, many women who did not attend single sex institutions of learning spoke to me of warm memories and important lifechanging or life–affirming experiences they had in some summer camp for girls somewhere in the United States or Canada. There are hundreds of all–girls camps in the United States; many are partnered with “brother” camps, which present coeducational opportunities. Camp is a wonderful opportunity to explore a female–empowering environment. The American Camp Association
www.find.acacamps.org
For a large and detailed directory of camps, see
www.campchannel.com
Go Worldwide
Archer students have also urged everyone—girls, adults, teachers, parents, philanthropists—to become involved with Educating Girls Globally (EGG), a grassroots organization that promotes girls’ schools, provides scholarships, and encourages communities all over the world to address the gender gap in education between boys and girls. Our students have twice gone to India to see EGG projects being implemented there.
www.educategirls.org
On another website for a similar group, Girls’ Global Education, the stories of individual girls are a glimpse into the challenging circumstances of some of the lives of poor children in other parts of the globe.
www.ggef.org
You can find advice for adults and wonderful worlds for girls on the world wide web. You can find communities of girls and mentors engaged in outreach, activism, and community service. If you don’t have a computer, call the nearest Girls Inc. center. They might let you use theirs. And once you get there, you won’t need to go any further to find a good program dedicated to girls’ well–being anyway
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