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Leadership Development

Access for Young Women Project
Forest Hills, New York

Expo display

Forest Hills Community House Educational Coordinator Sheryl Ross-Scalzo and Children & Teen Services Director Helena Ku	Children & Teen Services Director Helena Ku and Forest Hills Community House Assistant Executive Director Theresa Greenberg

A gender equity program for girls that addresses gender equity in education, especially for girls who suffer from multiple forms of discrimination. Girls participate in programs to enhance leadership skills, self-confidence, and self-esteem; learn to enjoy math and computer technology, and take part in SAT and high school entrance exam preparation classes; learn about nontraditional careers that offer higher pay; and meet role models in business, trade, and nontraditional academic programs. Primary audience: low- to moderate-income young women who are largely members of minority groups or new immigrants.

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Girls Leadership Project
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Expo display	Project Director Danya Ferraro and Project Coordinator Michelle Scott (from the Cambridge Public Schools)

This project is developing a model for promoting gender equity that places girls center stage in assessing and improving their schools. This collaborative effort between the Cambridge Public School System and the Cambridge Women’s Commission has established a program at five of the system’s fifteen elementary schools. At these schools, 60 girls in grades 5 to 8 participate in weekly workshops designed to help them find their personal and academic strengths and to more fully understand gender equity issues. These girls have been inducted as commissioners of the City of Cambridge’s Young Women’s Commission, a subcommittee of the Commission on the Status of Women. In that role they formulate an annual gender equity report of their own design, serve as advisors to the Superintendent of Schools and to the School Committee, and ensure that their recommendations are implemented.

This four-year project (1998-2002) asks girls to define leadership for themselves and provides leadership training based on their ideas; supports and cultivates the cultural and social strengths that girls already have; and uses girls’ personal and private writings as a foundation for learning skills for a public audience. Parental involvement is a critical component of the project’s design.

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Young Women’s Leadership Alliance
Santa Cruz, California

Expo display	ETR Associates Program Coordinator Beth Meyer and San Mateo County Office of Education Administrator Peter Burchyns

The Young Women’s Leadership Alliance in Santa Cruz, California, is an effort to engage high school girls at three schools in the Santa Cruz School District in activities to identify and address gender equity issues. The five-year project (2000-2005) has three components: building equity awareness through interactive workshops on the barriers to educational and career advancement, conducting equity research to measure and document areas of local inequity, and taking action for equity in which the girls focus on creating systemic change in their schools based on their research findings.

The project is a collaboration between Education, Training and Research Associates, a nonprofit organization, and the Santa Cruz City School District, Harbor High School, Santa Cruz High School, Soquel High School, She Rocks, and the Santa Cruz Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women. The program is designed to have an impact at three levels: the 450 girls directly involved in the leadership groups, all students at these schools, and the overall school and district policies and actions in the area of gender equity in education.

The following outcomes are expected for the participants in the program:

• assertiveness to speak up about issues of inequity, to be a leader, and to mentor peers to reach their potential
• optimism that they have a range of choices for future careers
• self-confidence that they possess marketable skills such as science, math, and technology
• awareness of inequity; the skills to identify barriers for women, cultural minorities, and those with physical disabilities; knowledge of how gender; and role attitudes influence options
• strategies for overcoming barriers to careers and education
• perceptions of support and encouragement, including positive role models, adults with women they can talk about equity, and increased alliances with other girls