Operation: Girl Power! has been developed to serve the growing need for a safe space and reflective outlet within the girl community. Girls today face overwhelming cultural, social, even familialpressures. While striving to meet the high expectations of being “good”, smart, pretty, well-liked, and popular, girls commonly experience an ocean of complex emotions including stress, insecurity, self-doubt, frustration, anger, and panic—all feelings associated with “disempowerment”. This sense of disempowerment or loss of control is rarely communicated; instead, it is often suppressed by girls. Without the space, guidance, and tools to healthfully process the pressures of their world, girls misdirect and channel bottled-up emotions into aggressive behavior that can be hurtful, at times destructive, to fellow girls and/or the girls themselves.
Operation: Girl Power! will empower the girl community by providing girls with creative opportunities—in school and out!—to speak openly, be heard, be respected, and (re)connect with themselves and one another. The events and workshops offered as part of Operation: Girl Power! promote honest, thoughtful, and necessary communication and exploration using a variety of fun, effective, girl-friendly tools including:
- Theater: An artistic outlet that offers a safe “stage” to play/act out relationships, situations, conflicts, motivations, and needs as characters. Role playing and scene building allows girls to recreate and analyze behavior, choices, strategies, tactics, and outcomes.
- Creative Writing: A reflective, creative process that encourages girls to put their experiences into words, to articulate their feelings on paper, and transfer emotions from the inside to the outside in the form of scenes, monologues, poems, articles, testimonials, and short stories.
- Social Networking: We like to think of it as “Girls, Unplugged”. Girls coming together for some old-school, face-to-face conversation, status updates, comments, profile sharing, and community building.
- Mentoring: Everyone needs a big sister. Girls will have the opportunity to talk openly and honestly with supportive and inspiring teen and adult mentors. Exchanging thoughts, feeling, ideas, and challenges with someone in addition to parents/family members can often be therapeutic for young girls.
