Girl Tall Programs

  Girl Talk for Girls ages 11-16
Life Cycles offers Girl Talk, a 12-week series of workshops to educate girls about puberty, body changes, media, and financial literacy. Girl Talk facilitates discussion about particular challenges facing girls during this time, and to empower girls with healthy decision-making and coping skills.

The first Girl Talk session was held in 1999 with five girls. Since then, Girl Talk has been presented to over 200 girls in public and private schools, community centers, summer camps, and one mental health center.

  Girl Talk for Adult Women
Starting in September of 2004, Life Cycles began offering Girl Talk for Adult Women. The six-week series of evening workshops focus include photography, clay sculpting, beading, jewelry making, crowns, scarf dancing, and more. Topics include: Understanding your menstrual cycle. identifying stressors and identifying positive coping and decision-making skills.

Philosophy
Girl Talk was started in 1999 by Eileen Stewart, CNM. As a midwife in private practice, Eileen found that many of her clients lacked awareness about their own menstrual cycle. Eileen became interested in educating girls about puberty, understanding their bodies, and making positive life choices.

The Midwifery Model of Care ™ emphasizes education and family-centered care not just during birthing, but throughout life. The American College of Nurse Midwives position statement on adolescent education includes, "Networking with other organizations to improve healthy behaviors in adolescents," and "support for interdisciplinary educational initiatives to develop . . . services for the pre-adolescent and adolescent, which recognize individual and unique developmental needs."

Girl Talk workshops are designed to address these issues. Each small group session includes discussion and art projects around the themes of puberty and positive self-image.

The overall program goals of Girl Talk are:
• To increase self-awareness in relationship to the developmental changes in adolescence.
• To provide information about coping skills and decisions making tools.
• To instruct in media literacy and awareness; learning to create photographic self-portraits and deconstruct advertising images.

Sessions
Girl Talk is run in 12-week blocks with one two-hour session each week. The small groups range in size from 5-20 girls.

Each session builds on the previous week's session, with suggested activities for practice between sessions. Each session begins with an affirmation about our time together and a relaxation exercise.

The first half is sharing time as well as presentation of the information on the topic. The second half is a planned activity to support integration of the topic and provide another way of understanding the concepts being presented.

At any time that girls ask a question they will be given factual information. If the question is something that will not benefit the whole group, or is confidential in nature, we will speak to the individual at the end of the session.

Overview of Sessions:
1. Understanding the menstrual cycle
2. Media and the construction of cultural ideas of beauty.
3. Decision-making skills.
4. Taking photographs, making images.
5. Understanding media images and marketing techniques.
6. Celebration of adolescence and womanhood. Girls are encouraged to invite mothers, aunts, or significant women to this session.

Activities, such as weaving headbands with three colors of ribbons, teach girls that they can integrate wisdom, knowledge and experience.