GUILFORD — It’s 9 p.m. on a Thursday and I am sitting at Ashley’s Ice Cream Shop in Guilford with a psychologist, a high school social worker, the program director and youth facilitator for the Women and Family Life Center, and six high school juniors. We are eating sundaes and talking about colleges.

But this is not why we are here.

What if you could teach today’s young women everything you wish you had known when you were 8, 12 or 17? What if you could let them know this:
“You are beautiful, you are OK, you can be-do-have whatever your heart desires and you are good just the way you are. And nobody, not boys, not the media, not society, not even other girls can break that sense of self in you.”

Girls Coach Girls Run aims to do that.

Sometimes, as Stacie Vos, of the Women and Family Life Center, has said: “Young people help themselves best by helping others first.”

This winter, Vos and her boss Leslie Krumholtz, along with Abby Lipshutz of Shoreline Psychological and Lori Acousti of Guilford High School, taught a six-week curriculum to the most amazing group of high school girls I have ever met.

Topics included navigating social relationships; girls, society and media; teamwork and motivation; and self-esteem. The juniors then taught a modified version to a group of seventh graders. After that, the girls took the program to Island Elementary in Madison, Calvin Leete in Guilford and Branford Elementary in Branford two days a week after school.

The program then takes on a new component — training and preparation for a 5K run to be held June 1. At the elementary level, volunteers join to act as adult facilitators. The adults are teachers, grad students, mothers and yoga instructors. Most fall into more than one of the aforementioned categories. In other words, they are extremely busy people.

“I chose it over track this year,” says Emily Gumbrecht, a tall pretty blond from Madison, the kind of girl you’d have wanted to hate in high school because she seems so perfect but you loved despite yourself because she is so nice.

“I’ve learned so much about myself,” she says. “I remember struggling with some of these issues in middle school. It’s great; we are able to talk about these things and I think getting anybody interested in running is always a good thing.”

Tonight’s topic is girls, media and society. A handout on choosing a role model says: “True role models possess qualities we would like to have and are those who have affected us in a way that makes us want to be be better people.”

“Who is your role model?” Guilford junior Nina Habbab asks the circle of 12-year-olds sitting cross-legged on the floor. Hands shoot up like rockets. The most common answer is this: my mom.

During the final week of the program there is no planned curriculum. Each team comes up with an art project to represent their experience. It will be “an opportunity to put out a message,” says Krumholtz. The project will be displayed at the Women and Family Life Center during and after the 5K run.

“We wanted these girls to come together, across ages, across towns,” says Lipshutz. “They are really bonding!” Acousti says. Sound Runner, a footwear store in Madison, has offered a free fitting and a discount to anyone participating in Girls Coach Girls Run. “I feel inspired by them,” Lipshutz says.

“And they got it!” Acousti adds, as the girls are trickling out to their cars or rides. It is a school night after all. I nearly forgot they were kids. —Rebecca Lucente
 

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ummmm   |2010-05-13 02:37:07 For an "empowering" article there sure is an awful lot of emphasis on what the girls ("You're beautiful" is the first thing in the list of values instilled) and the staff ("pretty blonde" etc.) LOOK like. Article fail. Also 5k run, nice, unless you're a disabled girl like me. Reply 0   1

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