Girls voices matter in Chicago and abroad

“I never thought I could dance. My mom always told me I had no rhythm. But, in Global Girls I’m dancing, and I love it!” Angela is a 7-year old special needs child who recently joined our afterschool program, Young Women on the Move. She misses session when she has emotional outbursts in school, and her mom has to leave work to attend to her. Now that Angela is learning dance and acting techniques with staff and other girls who accept and appreciate her just the way she is, her disruptive bouts in the classroom have lessened. Her mom is happy. Angela is glad to be in the holiday performance, and we are thrilled with her progress.

Angela’s story is one of many where the girls we engage are learning, making better choices and striving to be their personal best everyday in our afterschool program, in four school partnership programs and two programs in collaboration with other community-based organizations.

Thanks to donations from friends and supporters, known and unknown by us, we are now impact 42% more girls compared to this time last year. We’ve hired two new teaching artists and will add a resource assistant and an office manager in February. A team of interns from the University of Chicago will lead our five-year strategic planning initiative starting in January.

We are huge fans of Lin-Manuel-Miranda’s “Hamilton”. The youth company performs several choreographed musical numbers from the show. It has been their dream with for months to see it live and onstage. Finally, after much planning and deliberations, 25 youth and family members saw “Hamilton” live on the CIBC theatre in downtown Chicago. The youth sold popcorn, held dance party fundraisers and did chores for friends and family members to raise money for the tickets. Two of our team members met people from the cast after the show. They’ve stayed in contact. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that cast members might come to our little studio on the south side of Chicago to work with our girls in a couple of weeks!

The Grenada girls will be in Chicago over Easter break in 2019. Stay tuned for updates and pictures. For now, the teaching artists and youth are very busy preparing for holiday performances and lots of fun. Happy Holidays to everyone!

Links:

• Girls perform Hamilton
• Recent news

Global Girls spent the summer with 80 youth in our 8^th annual Youth Performance camp. Now we are looking forward to working with another 800 during the upcoming school year in our community and nine school-based programs. Girls and a few boys ages 5 to 18 will engage in intensive, sequential communication, collaboration and critical-thinking skill development which helps them become excellent performers and engaged, focused and high achieving students at their respective schools. We are rolling out an improved curriculum to best our impressive impact from last year. 80% of our youth participants were on the honor rolls at the end of the 2017-18 school year, 100% progressed to the next grade level, 78% participated in other extra-curricular activities and 92% reported that they applied skills learned in Global Girls session when collaborating or resolving conflicts with others.

Global Girls student outcomes include increasing participant social/emotional skill development through mindfulness training which we began during the summer youth performance camp with very impressive results. Youth remembered 80% of the terms, used the terms in their interactions with others and, in their exit reports, said that the mindfulness training was one of the highlights of their summer. All said that they used the practice outside of Global Girls and had talked about mindfulness with their parents at least once.

The youth also partnered with a local senior residence other the summer to share thier passion for theatre with the "young at heart" and help others rediscover uninhibited fun. During five weekly rehearsals, they created and practiced a play based on senior stories. 12 seniors started the project, eight performed in the finale before thier peers, family members and community supporters. "I haven't had this much fun since I wa a child," said an 82-year old actress after the show as she hugged one of the girls who had played her daugher in the skit. We'll conintue that relationship in the fall. How could we not?

In the culminating event, summer camp youth took the stage and lit it up with nearly 100 points of light Thursday, August 2nd at the annual Youth Performance Camp Showcase. The audience of nearly 300 laughed, applauded and cheered as the campers sang, danced and acted displaying all the skills they had mastered in our “Summer of Mindfulness” themed sessions. Youth as young as four and as old as 18 were nervous backstage, but once they stepped in front of the lights and the audience, they shined brightly like diamonds. Parents, friends and community members lavished praise on all of the performers. Thanks to tour many supporters, Global Girls is taking pride in Chicago’s south side by building assets – our youth.