Equipping Armenian Girls with Leadership Skills
"Passive." "Obedient." "Living in the shadows." These are words used by girls to describe themselves before participating in SYC's Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) program. Young women growing up in rural Armenia live relatively traditional lives, with few opportunities to develop their leadership skills or participate actively as citizens.
Aimed at girls, ages 13-16, GLOW seeks to create a new generation of female leaders who possess the knowledge and skills needed to play an active role in the development of their communities. The program begins with a residential summer school, giving up to 70 young women the chance to work in a team-based setting and to explore topics such as personal development, gender issues, career planning, health, the environment, human rights, HIV/AIDS, peer education, and leadership. Afterward, participants hold peer education sessions in their communities, contribute to GLOW newspaper, and help organize regional seminars during the year for other young women.
SYC provides GLOW participants with the support and information they need to effectively plan and run peer education sessions and transfer their acquired knowledge and skills to their peers. GLOW alumnae also plan and execute local projects, together with local youth, to make a difference in their communities.
Sixteen-year-old Syuzanna Galstyan, from the village Khot in the Syunik region of southern Armenia, was interested in protecting her community's natural and cultural heritage. Her idea: conduct a seminar to raise awareness about environmental issues and connect it with a cleanup activity focused on the road surrounding a local chapel. Says Syuzanna:
"I wanted to connect education with action. It's easy to talk about what needs to be done, but talk isn't always connected to concrete action. Concerned as to whether I could organize it myself, I presented the idea to the director of our school who was very supportive and decided to join us. To begin with, I developed the seminar using GLOW materials, interactive sessions, and information I found online. Next, I prepared a brochure on environmental topics to distribute to participants, including my 18 high school classmates, a few teachers, and the director. An outdoor seminar held in October enabled participants to connect more strongly to the topic and with the surrounding environment. All of us were excited and enthusiastic. At the end of the day, we created some posters to share our message about maintaining a clean environment with others in the community. The event was a great success. We felt like a big and connected family, where everyone knows his/her responsibilities and the environmental is a shared home. I felt like I had contributed to something special and had stepped up another stair in the ladder of my life."
Increasingly, girls like Syuzanna are using words like "positive," "purposeful," "determined," and "self-confident" to describe themselves and their hopes for the future.
With support from the StarbucksTM Shared PlanetTM Youth Action Grants program, the Stepanavan Youth Center (SYC), founded by 2004 YouthActionNet® Fellow Lilit Simonyan, is strengthening the leadership skills of hundreds of Armenian girls, ages 13 to 16. Above, Lilit describes the program's impact to date. International Youth Foundation highlights the GLOW project on its web site. http://youthactionnet.org/index.php?fuse=showblogdetails&blogid=3034
Aimed at girls, ages 13-16, GLOW seeks to create a new generation of female leaders who possess the knowledge and skills needed to play an active role in the development of their communities. The program begins with a residential summer school, giving up to 70 young women the chance to work in a team-based setting and to explore topics such as personal development, gender issues, career planning, health, the environment, human rights, HIV/AIDS, peer education, and leadership. Afterward, participants hold peer education sessions in their communities, contribute to GLOW newspaper, and help organize regional seminars during the year for other young women.
SYC provides GLOW participants with the support and information they need to effectively plan and run peer education sessions and transfer their acquired knowledge and skills to their peers. GLOW alumnae also plan and execute local projects, together with local youth, to make a difference in their communities.
Sixteen-year-old Syuzanna Galstyan, from the village Khot in the Syunik region of southern Armenia, was interested in protecting her community's natural and cultural heritage. Her idea: conduct a seminar to raise awareness about environmental issues and connect it with a cleanup activity focused on the road surrounding a local chapel. Says Syuzanna:
Increasingly, girls like Syuzanna are using words like "positive," "purposeful," "determined," and "self-confident" to describe themselves and their hopes for the future.
With support from the StarbucksTM Shared PlanetTM Youth Action Grants program, the Stepanavan Youth Center (SYC), founded by 2004 YouthActionNet® Fellow Lilit Simonyan, is strengthening the leadership skills of hundreds of Armenian girls, ages 13 to 16. Above, Lilit describes the program's impact to date. International Youth Foundation highlights the GLOW project on its web site. http://youthactionnet.org/index.php?fuse=showblogdetails&blogid=3034
