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2008 Leadership Training Project and Forums In Honor of Moreen and Saffi In February 2008, a Girls Speak Out girl named Moreen, 15, was killed in post-election violence in Kibera, a slum where hundreds of thousands of girls and their families live in Kenya. Jane, a board member and our Kenyan leader, sent e-mails at risk to herself detailing the crimes against Moreen and other girls as well as against other peaceful Kenyans. (See http://generationkenya.co.ke/main/category/champions and scroll to Nyaminwa for more information on Jane's activities.) Moreen was cooking her family's dinner at home in the afternoon using paraffin because they have no electricity, and she needed more. Her younger brother offered to run and buy some, but she felt she was faster. When Moreen left the house, she was shot in the stomach. Her last words to her mother were, "I'm sorry to die, and in so much pain." The family was forced to leave her body in a ditch by the railroad tracks. When Jane and others organized a funeral, it was teargassed. In 2008, a Girls Speak Out Forum will be held in Kibera for 200 girls, and it will focus on post-election violence healing. Many of the girls have been raped, and each deserves to have her hope back. Working with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, we will also train women in a number of grassroots' organizations to hold Girls Speak Out workshops that will help connect them in hopeful and necessary ways. We are a positive force that we plan on sustaining for years by helping create leaders. We will also visit Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in the summer of 2009 to celebrate Saffi's 7 for 7 Campaign, and to work with a local organization named MEdeA to promote a national Tanzanian Girls Speak Out initiative. See recent media on Saffi, Girls Speak Out and girls in Tanzania by clicking here http://www.womensenews.org:80/article.cfm?aid=3608 At the same time, we are cetifying and supporting women in the USA who are realizing we can make a difference in our communities and change our lives for the better from the inside-out. Reach out and change a girl's life from the inside-out You can help by donating using the link below. $40USA pays for one girl to attend and connect to our support network. BACKGROUND For the first time, Girls Speak Out launched a special project in 2007 called the Caged Bird Sings. It builds on ongoing feedback from participants, and its goal is to ensure that girls who are often isolated by geography and/or extreme circumstances will be able to ask for what they need, receive needed materials and support, be included in workshops, and offered sustained follow-up. As communications increase between countries and individuals, we also respond to emergencies that passed unnoticed before. Today for example, Andrea sends articles for girls in Cameroon and Kenya on topics given to her by Florence and Jane, GSO women leaders in those countries who work directly with girls. And a certified GSO trainer, Kim in Ontario, trained women in Tanzania and supports their continuing training of other women. As one participant, 14 year-old Freida, says, "All girls have a right to understand their importance to society. We've been mistreated and misinformed over the ages about what we deserve and what we can and can't do. Thank you for showing me I have choices, a future--and that I belong no matter what happens to me." Girls Speak Out was co-founded to bring girls ages eight to eighteen years old who come from a variety of backgrounds together for a series of powerful workshops and an opportunity to join an activist network. During the workshops, they cross traditional boundaries of age, race, class, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation and politics and explore common ground. In each workshop, instead of needing to be rescued, girls have been inspiring each other and women who come to assist them. Girls become role models for each other. They consistently display courage and resiliency that challenges obstacles they all face in varying degrees in every country. Girls in extreme circumstances, however, require unique and sustained support. While they can also learn from each other, and even develop their own healing programs, they also need specialized information from experts that focuses on their strengths as well as their survival. The extreme circumstances Caged Bird Sings Project will address include:
The Caged Bird Sings Project launched in the USA and Africa in 2007, and each participant will be eligible for a minimum of three years of follow-up. We need your financial support! Any amount makes a difference, and makes you a force for positive change. The Caged Bird Sings Project was created and piloted in multiple settings including juvenile detention centers in northern California, in Harlem Hospital in New York City, in Kenya and villages in India. *Used with permission of Dr. Maya Angelou |
| A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. -- Maya Angelou |
| Girls Cutting Themselves 4/22/08 In recent weeks, girls have been telling us about friends and/or girls in their middle and high schools from New York to Kansas and California who cut themselves, which is not a new form of self-mutilation, but one that is more commonplace and accepted. In some schools these girls belong to a club whose members all cut themselves. What we've been told is that school is a lot of pressure and part of fitting in is showing you're strong by inflicting pain on yourself, which is something that you have control of unlike many other things in your life. Even when the cuts are covered by clothing, the cutter knows they're there. One high-school sophomore is not convinced and asks, "Why hurt yourself when the whole idea of growing up is to take care of yourself?" One Bottom Line: Your body is you and how you care for it is a big part of how you feel day by day. Try something else such as talking to someone you trust or work on believing you are valuable and will have chances to be who you are now and if not now, later in your life. Put the razor down and pick up a pen or use a keyboard to tell your journal who you are deep inside. Life will improve and you'll be whole. EMERGENCY NEWS Click here for details and help by joining our 7 for 7 Campaign 4/6/08 Saffi was returned home after 7 days of capture much to the joy of her family and friends near and far. She was raped and in distressed condition, and with few support services on the ground, there is fear for her healing, especially from the possibility of HIV/AIDS. 3/31/08 Saffi, a 7 year-old Tanzanian girl pictured here in a photo by Kim Kitchen, our trainer in Tanzania, was stolen on her way to school on March 31, 2008. Fears are that she will be a victim of FGM, sold as a bride-in-waiting or murdered. Please support efforts to find her by sending information, hope and/or donations to help the search.  Saffi Tanzania 2007 My biggest fear is losing my dreams, and sometimes I'm afraid for my life. -- Tiffany, 14, Juvenile Detention Center, USA It means so much to me that women are working so hard for us. --Norrel, 8, Kenya When I read what Girls Speak Out wrote to us about using clean cloth when we have our periods, it clicked. My body and I are worth taking care of. ---S, 13, Cameroon |
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| Girls Speak Out is a positive place to recover hope. -- Sandra L. Bloom, M.D. author of Creating Sanctuary and Violence and Bearing Witness |
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| I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition -- about what we can endure, dream, fail at, and still survive. -- Maya Angelou |