This past weekend I had the incredible opportunity to assist in a girls leadership program called Wavus Girls Lead. Wavus Girls Lead is a four month long program that allows 7th and 8th grade girls to develop their leadership skills in order to effectively avoid and resolve conflicts and difficult circumstances that they may face in their daily lives. This weekend, we focused on how to effectively communicate, how the media portrays women and girls, how to safely challenge ourselves, and how we might handle ourselves when conflict arises in a community.
We started off the weekend by teaching the girls an acronym for effective communication: LEADSTAR. LEADSTAR stands for Listen, Eye Contact, Avoid distractions and being a distraction, Don't interrupt, Speak loudly and clearly, Think before you speak and act, Ask questions about the topic, and Repeat the message. Once we went over what LEADSTAR meant, we created hand symbols for each component of …show more content…
Before the girls jumped onto the high ropes course, we did a quick team-building activity on the low ropes course. Between the 20 of us, we all had to fit on four small, square platforms that were about ten feet apart, with a rope-swing in the middle. The objective of this activity was to have everyone swing across to the platform on the opposite side. The rules were as followed: everyone is allowed two swings on the rope, we were allowed to touch the ground three times before we had to start over, and the rope was not allowed to be swung unless a person was on it. The girls worked together and used their LEADSTAR communication to complete this activity in two tries! This activity helped the girls trust one-another on the high ropes course because they were belaying each other, Egyptian belay style (a ratio of 4 girls belaying to one girl climbing). Every single one of the girls was able to be part of a belay team, and almost all of the girls attempted an
We started off the weekend by teaching the girls an acronym for effective communication: LEADSTAR. LEADSTAR stands for Listen, Eye Contact, Avoid distractions and being a distraction, Don't interrupt, Speak loudly and clearly, Think before you speak and act, Ask questions about the topic, and Repeat the message. Once we went over what LEADSTAR meant, we created hand symbols for each component of …show more content…
Before the girls jumped onto the high ropes course, we did a quick team-building activity on the low ropes course. Between the 20 of us, we all had to fit on four small, square platforms that were about ten feet apart, with a rope-swing in the middle. The objective of this activity was to have everyone swing across to the platform on the opposite side. The rules were as followed: everyone is allowed two swings on the rope, we were allowed to touch the ground three times before we had to start over, and the rope was not allowed to be swung unless a person was on it. The girls worked together and used their LEADSTAR communication to complete this activity in two tries! This activity helped the girls trust one-another on the high ropes course because they were belaying each other, Egyptian belay style (a ratio of 4 girls belaying to one girl climbing). Every single one of the girls was able to be part of a belay team, and almost all of the girls attempted an