Leadership and Community Action

She led with her skills… and into her future.

Girls build leadership skills and create lasting social change through community action projects. With support from women in their community, girls celebrate the heritage of girls and women as leaders and social change agents and realize their own power as community resources and trustees of the common good.

Why is a leadership program for girls important?

In a survey about views of stereotypes about girls, half of adults and one-third of girls said it was true that people believe girls are not good leaders. Throughout history, girls and women have been formal and informal leaders of significant social movements and blazed pathways to progress and change; their leadership, however, has often gone unrecognized. Some stereotypes about girls and women present additional obstacles to thinking of girls and women as leaders: that girls care a lot about shopping, that they are only interested in love and romance, or that getting married and having children should be their most important, if not sole, life goal. Consequently, it can be challenging to ensure that girls have opportunities to lead and to be agents of change. To address the lack of recognition and opportunities for girls and women as leaders and their contributions to social change, it is essential that girls have experiences that help them discover the power of their capacity for formal and informal leadership. The experiences also need to develop girls’ awareness of and responsible engagement in their community. It is critical that girls take this journey of discovery with women in their communities and participate in meaningful opportunities to effect lasting change through community action (small scale as well as large scale), providing convincing evidence to themselves and to others of their individual and collective power.

About the Program

Discovery (for girls ages 9 to 11) engages girls in partnership with both formal and informal women leaders in their communities to celebrate their heritage as leaders, develop and practice leadership and advocacy skills, and construct community action projects. Girls get to make decisions and take responsibility for and initiate projects in collaboration with experienced women. Together, the girls and women discover their own leadership skills through hands-on activities, role playing, community exploration, and a weekend retreat, culminating in the identification of issues of ongoing concern to the community and formulation of responses that entail persuasive communication and organizing for action.

In Our Own Hands (for girls ages 12 to 14) engages girls in celebrating their heritage, investigating rights and responsibilities, practicing leadership skills, and tackling issues of concern. Girls deepen their understanding of girls and women as social change agents and of leadership as a collective process grounded in belonging to, and having responsibility for, one’s community. The first phase of the program focuses on strengthening girls’ skills and their knowledge of and appreciation for female leadership in the context of community. During the second phase, facilitators draw upon several activity toolboxes and women from the community as resources to continue building girls’ leadership skills. Girls go through a problem assessment process that helps them learn about a community issue, and then develop and conduct a community action project with the support of women partners.