We sometimes wonder now if what happened was a divine accident or, fueled by our own growing-up experiences as girls, a burning flame that had been smoldering within each of us for years and suddenly . . . because of one special girl . . . ignited.
This girl captured our attention and our hearts when we first met her as an 8-year-old. She was slight in stature and slower than the others, as she wore a leg brace. An old scar on her head was noticeable despite ponytails and barrettes. Nevertheless, her smile would explode across her face like a spark of fireworks and in her large blue eyes we saw, amidst the sadness and neglect, an incredible true sense of hope. She embodied everything that became the catalyst for the GirlsTalk & Teen Voices programs.
Our backgrounds complemented each other's strengths perfectly. Laurie spent 15 years in management as the Assistant Food Service Director for the University of Maine at Farmington's (UMF) dining service, which employed 80-100 students per semester. Her career changed directions when she decided to fulfill a dream of teaching. She accepted a position at Kingfield Elementary School, which in turn gave her hands-on experience with elementary students. Kirsten's career began at her alma mater, Anna Maria College. Moving to the University of Maine at Farmington, her path led from residence life to her current role in student development. Within each of our roles, we were committed professionals with an unwavering focus on serving students at both levels and helping them become successful leaders and citizens in the global community. In the state of Maine alone, there are 120 identified mentoring programs (Maine Mentoring Partnership Factsheet, n.d.). Looking closer at mentoring itself, research now tells us that providing a consistent and high-quality mentoring program translates into relationships that can significantly improve the social, emotional, academic, and physical development of the children involved (Bier, Rosenfeld, Spitalny, Zansky, & Bontempo, 2000; Kelly-Vance, 2001).
The GirlsTalk & Teen Voices programs were conceptualized based on these findings, our own backgrounds, and the overwhelming evidence of need we witnessed firsthand in the young girls we met. In spite of the societal changes for women that have occurred within this last decade, many of today's girls between the ages of 9-15 continue to fall into traditional patterns of low self-esteem, self-doubt, self-censorship of potential, and confusion (Orenstein, 1994). By designing the humanities/book-based mentoring programs GirlsTalk & Teen Voices, we hoped to expand girls' and young women's goals and aspirations beyond existing cultural and societal restraints.
Kingfield is a small community in Western Maine. Our local school district is spread over approximately 500 square miles and reaches from Coburn Gore on the Canadian border to communities along the Sandy River. The staggering statistics of this area show 38 percent of the population living below the poverty level and 27 percent of the adults in the school district lacking high school diplomas. GirlsTalk & Teen Voices help address this rural isolation as well as the common gaps and weaknesses that lead to a scarcity of educational and cultural opportunities for the participants.
The University of Maine at Farmington (UMF), located in the foothills of Western Maine, is a public liberal arts institution. Founded in 1864 as a normal school, UMF is a baccalaureate institution with a tradition of integrating liberal arts and professional studies. The campus community includes 2,000 full-time students, 70 percent of whom are from Maine. Twenty-one foreign countries are represented in the student population.
Forming a partnership among the school, the Kingfield community, and the UMF community gave us the opportunity to use not only our educational and management backgrounds, but also the wealth of resources available to us. Our objectives in this partnership were to:
We began with a format from the original GirlsTalk program founded by Valerie Osborne, a former middle school teacher and current librarian at the Old Towne Maine Public Library, and Cindy Seger, who is also a librarian. They created a mentoring program centered on book discussions and special outings. This combination had proven to be very successful. With that blueprint in mind, we spent the next few months planning what a program of this nature should be, evaluating the resources we had at hand, and brainstorming ways to fund it. We had literally no capital, but as our own mothers would say, we had "moxie."
In the fall of 2000, we boldly reached out into the Kingfield and UMF communities. Our vision was to create a pilot program, offering it to all 5th- and 6th-grade girls and crossing our fingers that at least 50 percent would want to join. With newly designed brochures in hand, Laurie went parent to parent at the opening barbeque for the elementary school and introduced our idea. Together, we held open houses at our respective schools for the parents, their daughters, and prospective mentors. We met with Theo Kalikow, President of UMF, and asked her for any support she could provide. Laurie submitted a program overview, complete with recommended books and reviews, to our local Parent Teacher Organization and town Recreation Board. We sent letters to local businesses asking them to sponsor one month's dinner. Everyone contributed—for group books, dinners, our planned cultural event, busing, and more. We cut corners by doing the cooking ourselves, enlisting help from the girls and their parents with desserts each month. We purchased all books from Scholastic Books, which increased our purchasing power by earning book points. These points ultimately turned into more books!! We were committed to offering this experience to girls and women at no cost. It was life on a shoestring, but what a wonderful life!
We sought an even balance of mentors; half from the Kingfield community and half student leaders from UMF. We sought women who would be committed to being positive role models, who would be willing to jump into this new program, who were ready to accept a commitment of this nature, and who possessed the qualities of a guide, trusted friend, and good listener. All candidates completed an application process and references were checked. At each school, we held informational sessions. At the university level, second- to fourth-year students who had proven themselves through leadership in clubs/organizations were asked to apply. Kirsten targeted key faculty for recommendations and Laurie went out into the community and started sharing our vision with women. One of our goals throughout this process was to create an environment that would foster a strong commitment to community. Encouraging local women to participate would help create that link.
The next step in the process was to ask teachers to release their 5th- and 6th-grade girls for half-hour increments so that the program could be explained, their feedback could be sought, and their questions answered. We'll never forget that blank look on those first young girls who innocently asked, "What's a mentor?" Each step of the process was truly a learning experience for us all. The program began in November with 100 percent participation from both grades and included two home-schooled girls whose parents had approached us.
The monthly program format is as follows:
In addition to this, our programs offer the following:
The support from many different constituencies, including Kingfield Elementary School, the Kingfield community, families, teachers, the university, the media, and participants, provided the impetus to create a similar program for girls in grades 7 and 8 for the second year. Teen Voices was launched in Fall 2001. Filled with the commitment to enhance these adolescents' lives, we forged into relatively unknown territory. We had a program format that was successful, yet we believed we needed to challenge the adolescents to read about and discuss issues that were affecting their lives. We selected books that address topics such as positive body image, peer pressure, dysfunctional family structure, alcohol abuse, and sexual assault. At the same time, we began seeking funding for the programs through private grants as well as gifts in kind, and matching funding from both the Kingfield Elementary School and the University of Maine at Farmington. The Women's Studies Program and the College of Education, Health, and Rehabilitation at the university endorse both programs and a faculty scholar is now affiliated with these programs.