In the Circle with Girls

Today I had the opportunity to attend a Girls Circle training with the Girls Circle co-founder, Giovanna Taormina. I first heard about Girls Circle through my work as an editor with New Moon magazine about four years ago, and I remember thinking, "Wow! What a great thing for girls!"

Being at the training reaffirmed that for me. Not only did I get to meet dozens of women (and one man!) working with girls in many different capacities, but I had the opportunity to be reminded of why working with girls in a different way is so crucial.

At New Moon, we work under a principle called "Share the Power," in which girls and adults make decisions together about the content of New Moon Girls magazine and our upcoming online experiences. Part of "Share the Power" involves creating a safe space where girls feel comfortable speaking up and disagreeing with one another -- otherwise, we'd never get to what girls really wanted and needed from New Moon. The Girls Circle philosophy also talks about sharing the power; in Girls Circles, the power is about girls helping one another to make good decisions about their lives. Girls Circles can happen in many different settings, such as schools, community programs, after-school programs, churches, and juvenile justice systems, to name a few.

Girls Circles are built around the understanding -- finally becoming mainstream -- that girls are not the same as boys, nor are they the same as adults. The Girls Circle model is rooted in the facts about how girls' brains and development work, so that girls can come together in a model that's designed for them. It's no wonder girls love coming to the circles, and no wonder that they raise girls' self-esteem (and lead them to making better choices).

There was so much wisdom at today's training that I could fill 10 blog posts. Some of the ideas that struck me the most were that

• Girls' (and women's) psychological well-being is closely tied to their relationships. This means that girls and women in unhealthy relationships are more likely to abuse substances, have a low opinion of themselves, and struggle with depression. On an instinctual level, this makes sense. But now we have the science to prove it: when it comes to girls, relationships matter.
  
• Similarly, the primary goal of the female brain is to form community; talking activates female's pleasure centers in the brain, but rejection activates the stress centers.
  

This is the foundation for the work that Girls Circle does with girls. The circle creates trust among the girls participating by

• laying down groundrules that all agree upon
  
• letting everyone have their turn to talk (a "talking stick" or other talking object helps with this)
  
• turning things "back over to the group" as much as possible, rather than having an adult step in and "fix" any issue a girl brings up
  
• committing to confidentiality, except in cases of mandatory reporting.

Once that trust has been established in a circle, the female brain is happy because it has a safe, healthy relationship to depend upon. This gives a girls a jumping off point to take the risk of being their authentic selves in the world, because they've seen a place where being authentic didn't lead to rejection. Wow, powerful stuff.

And the best part of all? Anyone can start a Girls Circle, anywhere. Girls circle or not, my hope is that all girls would find a place that felt that safe.

Girls growing New Moon

Here's a message from Julia for all girls & parents (see the end of the message if you're a parent or caring adult) who want to help New Moon reach more girls:

Hey girls,

You're the most important part of New Moon Girls and we want to invite you to be on the new Street Team that I'm coordinating-take a look at what this is about! At New Moon we want the world to hear from girls, respect girls, and support girls' dreams. The Street Team will help more and more girls everywhere use their voices, achieve their dreams, and work together in ways that matter.

You can use your voice and spread the word about New Moon Girls magazine and New Moon Girls online! Find out more about what the New Moon Girls Street Team is doing in June and all the fun ways YOU can get involved. New Moon plans are always centered on girls and their ideas so I want to hear from you!

Feel free to e-mail me and with questions and ideas, and I'll send you an application to join the team and get some street teamer goodies. Now you can share your love for New Moon while being an ambassador for girls and their dreams!

If you want to join the street team or if you've got thoughts on what Street Teamers could be doing...or even what we should name our street team, give me a shout!

Thanks!

Julia
juliab@newmoongirlmedia.com

For Parents & Other Adults: You can join the Street Team, too - email Julia for more info on what you can do to help.

Thanks for helping us reach more girls - they benefit from New Moon and you can get it to them.

More from the NCMR

I'm done with sitting in on panels for the day, and my overall feeling is of inspiration. Many experts feel that we're at a cross-roads of change, and that calls for media reform and social change are stronger than they've been in a long time.

Also really important to me is the emphasis on collaboration I've been hearing. Events like this conference make the possibilities of the change that can happen with collaboration seem within reach. There are so many passionate, hard-working people here, gathered together to meet each other and work together. It's easy to become embittered or cynical when working alone, but remembering that each of us here today (and many others who aren't!) are out there, contributing to improving life on this planet, refreshes me and helps me keep going.

For now, I'm off to the art opening for Project Girl, a really exciting project where girls respond to negative media images with their own art and media pieces.

More tomorrow!

From the National Conference for Media Reform

Hi everyone! This is Julia again - I'm writing from the National Conference for Media Reform. So far we've heard some opening comments full of information, passion, and calls to action.

Everyone here has goals of shaping a free, tolerant society with open communication; this is the kind of world I want to help create for girls. The girls that I'm lucky enough to work with have the passion and energy to change things that frustrate them, and I hope that vigor never gets kicked out of them. When girls continue to speak out as they turn into women, it's much more likely that they will be future leaders in many industries as well as government. I'm really proud to be part of New Moon, where we help girls' voices stay strong!

Guest Post: Girl Media Maven Spreads the Word

Hi Girl Media Maven readers,

I'm Julia, an Online Editor at New Moon. I'm just dropping in to guest blog a bit about some of what I've been up to at New Moon.

I am really jazzed about and dedicated to New Moon's goals which help girls have confidence to realize their dreams. New Moon is growing these days to reach more and more girls and expand with its new online presence. As part of this process, I am working to help us have successful websites and blogs by spreading the word and my excitement for what we do at New Moon! I help to run our blog with girl teens, orb28, and I talk about New Moon with adults through blogs on many topics from media literacy to parenting to feminist news.

I'm excited to say that Girl Media Maven is now part of moms.alltop.com and women.alltop.com, listings of blogs pertinent to the interests of moms and women in general. I hope that our listings in Alltop, along with BlogHer.com, Blogsbywomen.com, themomblogs.com and some others, will help parents (dads too!) and adults who care about girls to find our community.

And speaking of community, I'd love to invite you to join us on Facebook and MySpace if you haven't already! We're also on Twitter and FriendFeed, if you'd like to find us there! These communities are a good way to stay updated on New Moon happenings and share the work of New Moon with friends.

I also hope you love our spiffy new buttons on the left sidebar that will help you share this blog and subscribe to the Girl Media Maven blog feed! (I just discovered the magic of RSS feeds myself, and I definitely recommend getting yourself set up with a reader if you're not already. It makes staying up to date with news and articles so much easier than receiving tons of emails. I use Google Reader and there are lots of other good ones out there too!)

As you can tell, I'm really passionate about using the internet to help us come together to improve girls' and women's lives. And I'd love to connect with you! Please feel free to email me at juliab@newmoongirlmedia.com with questions and comments. If you or anyone you know would like to become involved in guest posting, content sharing, or other forms of partnership with New Moon, feel free to email me as well.

So far in my web travels I have met many kind and interesting folks doing great work for girls, and I'm excited at what we can achieve if we work together. I'd love if you could help spread the word about New Moon, and hope to learn that you're interested in working collaboratively so we can help your valuable work as well. I look forward to hearing from you!