By Sarah Stone

Strength and knowledge gained at girls’ conference

Oct 18, 2014 | 11:51 AM

A two-day conference aimed at building girls’ self-esteem while delivering information has kicked off.

On Friday at the John M. Cuelenaere Public Library around 90 girls from Grades 9 to 12 participated in the sixth annual Power of Being a Girl conference held by the YWCA.

Jocelyn Balzer, co-ordinator, said this year’s theme surrounds leadership with discussions being led by SGI and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) concerning impaired driving and texting while driving.  There was also a goal setting workshop utilizing vision boards and breakout sessions the girls could choose from including a teen mom ‘s real life experiences, SIAST’s women and trades workshop and Lucian Phillips self-defence class.

All of this is meant to “educate them [the girls] on different topics, so they can carry that through their lives.”  Balzer said it gets the girls to think in the short and long term sense of what needs to happen to make them leaders.

“I think it’s just about connecting the girls to the relevant information and building up their self-esteem and letting them know that different people in the community band together [and] care about them,” Balzer said.

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A group of Grade 10s said they hope this conference will teach them how to face the pressures of being a girl in today’s society.

“People are getting judged about how they look.  How big they are, if they are fat or skinny it doesn’t really matter, but people are getting judged because of it,” Brianne Reich said while sitting with a group of her friends.

This pressure is handled in different ways depending on the girl.

“I just kind of do whatever I kind a feel, like I don’t really worry about what other people think.  I just ignore it,” said Zoe Carrier.

But, according to group, it’s hard to not let judgemental comments and stares affect them.

“It doesn’t really make us feel good, like honestly it doesn’t really make you feel good when you get a look like that, but you know, it’s stuff like this, groups like this that make us feel more confident about  ourselves and about being a woman and being a girl in society,” Tristyn Sachkowski added.

The girls were some of many that chose to use their elective breakout session to learn self-defence.  They agreed that at times, feel frightened walking in Prince Albert.  Even outside of the city, they feel self-defence could become helpful because “the world is scary,” they said.

 “So we learn how to defend ourselves and then we can teach other girls how to defend themselves, so then they’re not alone and they can go for walks by themselves and know that they can be protected and they can protect themselves they don’t have to worry about a man or somebody else protect them,” Sachkowski said about why she chose to this session over the two others.

The Power of Being a Girl conference will continue into Saturday at Queen Mary Community School for girls in Grade 5 to 8. 

Balzer said they expect around 120 to participate and they’ll have different topics of discussion to fit that age category.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84