P.A. YWCA teaches girls to rock out and be empowered

They attended workshops focusing on self-esteem, healthy relationships and discrimination, while also learning about car care and how to properly maintain a budget.

“Everyone thinks we have achieved equality and we have not,” Brooks said. “There’s still a lot of areas where girls and women think they have to depend on a man…but what we’re teaching them is that they can do it themselves.”

One of the most popular workshops saw girls singing along with local all-girl high-school band The Wolfe, and hearing about how great it is to follow your passion.

The Wolfe would play their em’power’ment ballads and share their personal story for a half-hour, and then as part of the workshop the girls would learn the chorus of a song written specifically for the conference.

At the end anyone brave enough could step on stage and sing or play an instrument.

“Most people are really participating to the fullest,” Lucy James said. She runs Jam Street Music Sessions and organized the workshop. “One thing we stress is that it’s important to take a bit of risk in your life every now and then.”

“These kids look up to us so much because it feels like they’re so involved in this,” drummer Tessa Thompson said. “We’re doing what we love and it’s telling them to do what you wanna do, it doesn’t matter what other people think as long as you’re doing what you love and wanna do.”

The Wolfe put out their first single “The Sea and Me” late last year. It can be found here.

Angie Robertson ran the car workshops, teaching young girls road safety tips, how to change a tire, and check their oil.

Robertson calls these skills invaluable for anyone, especially in Saskatchewan during winter, but it was especially critical for girls to learn these skills.

She said that in families with brothers and fathers, girls weren’t being taught how to take care of their car since there was a male around to do the work instead.

“Girls are getting their licenses at 16, and in a lot of cases they’re doing highway driving. If anything happened on the side of the road it’s important for them to be able to take care of themselves and not necessarily have to rely on others.”

The young women also learned about finance. Jolene Meinema, senior manager of personal banking with Scotiabank, made sure that the girls in her workshop were active and engaged while dealing with the more abstract concept.

“Finance is not as fun as watching a band or self-defense,” she said, “but we had great feedback. They were very appreciative.”

Older girls learned about budget planning, working with a scenario where they had to manage their money and learn the difference between a want and a need.

The younger girls played financial trivia, having to guess how much items cost and learning how much more money men make versus women.

“The main message is empowering women,” Meinema said, “We give them resources to make sure they have the independence to break down the norms.”

She also taught them about alternative ways to be successful instead of travelling the traditional route of going to university. Meinema herself, who grew up in a single parent household, didn’t attend post-secondary out of high school.

Instead she leveraged her hard work ethic, which she then taught to the girls. “There’s other ways to get to where you want to go, since it’s mostly hard work no matter which route you choose.”

The leadership conference might soon not be exclusive to girls.

Brooks and her team has looked at a YWCA program in Moncton called “The Strength in Being a Boy.” It counters the stereotypical image of masculinity.

“Boys have issues too,” Brooks said. “They’re expected to be manly and not to cry…we’d really like to do something for boys in the same age group.”

ssterritt@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit

by Spencer Sterritt

P.A. YWCA teaches girls to rock out and be empowered

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