[EDEQUITY WEEA projects Dialogue] Opening Statement by Beth Meyer &

From: Jill Denner, Senior Research Associates (jilld@etr.org)
Date: Mon Feb 11 2002 - 10:10:39 EST


Jill Denner
Sender: owner-edequity@mail.edc.org
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Reply-To: edequity@mail.edc.org

Greetings,

We are Beth Meyer and Jill Denner from the Young Women's Leadership
Alliance. This project is a collaboration between Education, Training and
Research Associates (ETR), a not-for-profit organization, the Santa Cruz
Commission for the Prevention of Violence Against Women and the Santa Cruz
City School District.

The main activity in this project is a 15-week after-school program for
9th, 10th and 11th grade girls at three comprehensive, mainstream high
schools in Santa Cruz. It consists of three components: Equity Awareness
(the young women start to identify equity issues at their school), Equity
Research (the young women learn how to do survey research on an educational
equity issue of their choice), and Equity Action (the young women do a
social action project to educate their school about their research
findings).

The project is designed to have an impact at three levels: the 200 girls
directly involved in the after-school leadership program, all students and
staff at these schools, and the overall school and district policies and
actions in the area of gender equity in education. To evaluate the impact
of the program on all three levels, we are collecting survey and interview
data. We are currently starting our third of six semesters.

A little about us:

Dr. Denner received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, with a focus on
adolescent development and social reasoning in urban adolescents. Her
current research interests are in the positive development of adolescent
girls, the role of gender and culture in the development of Latino youth,
and innovative community-based strategies to prevent HIV risk behaviors.

Beth Meyer received her M.A. in Community Development. She has primary
responsibility for the implementation of the Young Women's Leadership
Alliance project. Her background includes coordinating a community
development program serving youth and adults with developmental
disabilities and facilitating leadership and support activities for gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.

One issue that we are grappling with is how to help young women develop a
language to understand what equity is. Through our program, they seem to
be able to understand what the difference between equity and equality is,
but we would like them to have a better understanding of the roots of the
educational inequity issues they are facing (and still keep our program at
15 weeks!).

We are looking forward to this dialogue with you!

Sincerely, Jill and Beth

Jill Denner
Senior Research Associate
ETR, Associates
Santa, Cruz, CA
Phone: 831-438-9651
e-mail: <jilld@etr.org>
&
Beth Meyer
Program Coordinator
ETR Associates
Santa, Cruz, CA
Phone: 831438-4060, ext. 218
e-mail: <bethm@etr.org>



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