Independent Girls Website (very cool opportunity)
This is something you might DEFINITELY be interested in!! Let me know if you contact her (and let her know you are from our Girls Studies class:). It is an exciting and very relevant opportunity for Girls Studies' students. :)
Hi Leandra,
Thank you so much for your e-mail and for your interest in Independent Girls. I'm very excited that you want to share the information with your Girls Studies class. I appreciate your support and hope that either you or your students will be interested in contributing to the website. In addition to writing opportunities, there are also volunteer opportunities for college students if anyone is interested. Below is the announcement from WMST-L and some more detailed information about specific needs and volunteer opportunities:
Independent Girls, Inc. is a new nonprofit organization based in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, that aims to provide positive role models for girls, to get them thinking about goal setting and success, and to give them the tools to be self-confident, emotionally grounded, healthy, and independent. The main tool for doing this is a website, http://www.independentgirls.org (to be launched before the end of 2009). Each week the site will feature a different role model for girls as well as an article related to positive, healthy girls' development. The site will send regularly scheduled e-mails to girls and parents who subscribe. Independent Girls' goal is to create a counterbalance to the celebrity-saturated, image-based culture of 9 – 15 year old girls by providing girls with the strong, positive female role models who are currently missing from teen media and by addressing issues germane to girls’ healthy development.
Independent Girls seeks people to write original content for the website and weekly newsletters. Writers will identify, research, and write about topics and trends salient to 9 – 15 year old girls, with an emphasis on what is important/necessary to becoming a healthy, balanced, emotionally grounded, confident girls. Additional emphasis will be placed on understanding popular culture and developing the critical thinking skills necessary to becoming media literate/savvy.
Weekly articles should provide girls with information about things that girls deal with between the ages of 9 - 15, for example self-esteem, body image, puberty, bullying/ cyberbullying, healthy relationships, eating disorders, healthy eating/nutrition, exercise, time management/stress management, goal setting, leadership, cliques and popularity, frenemies, peer pressure, financial independence, internet safety, and media awareness. Articles should be between 250-500 words long; some topics may need to be covered in a series of articles. Articles should be informative and easy to read and, most importantly, must engage girls. Articles should answer questions that girls have (and perhaps even answer questions that girls didn't even know that they had).
The site will also feature blogs where writers can have on-going editorial columns about different topics.
The Independent Girls website is going to have several different parts. One is a dictionary of sorts -- something I'm calling Girl Power Words -- where terms that I think girls should know and understand will be listed and defined in girl-friendly language with girl-friendly examples. Examples of Girl Power Words are feminism, empower, sexism, racism, discrimination, etc. Another section of the site will devoted to women's history (which I'm calling HerStory), including timelines of women's and girls' "firsts," profiles of women inventors, and profiles of great historical women. There will also be a section of positive role models for girls, which will be both written and video profiles of women who have achieved success in various fields and have volunteered to share their stories with girls (I could see some of the oral histories that you mention fitting in nicely here). Lastly, the site will feature weekly articles, blogs, and polls/quizzes.
I'm looking for writers to help develop both the Girl Power Words and the HerStory sections of the site as well as writers for weekly articles about different issues. My vision for the weekly articles is that they will provide girls with information about things that girls deal with between the ages of 9 - 15 such as:
•self-esteem
•body image
•puberty
•eating disorders
•healthy eating/nutrition
•bullying/ cyberbullying and healthy relationships
•cliques/popularity and peer pressure
•time management/stress management
•goal setting
•leadership
•financial independence
•media awareness
I want the articles to be informative and easy to read and, most importantly, to engage girls. My hope is that the articles will answer questions that girls have (and perhaps even answer questions that girls didn't even know that they had).
I'd also like to have a blog that showcases college-age women and spotlights their experiences and stories as examples for middle and high school girls. These could be stories from when the college-age women were in middle and high school, including how they felt then and how they are able to see and process the experiences now, stories about what it's like to be in college, how you went about choosing a college or choosing a major, advice about friends/boys, etc. -- sort of like providing the younger girls with virtual big sisters who can help and role model growing up. I'm looking for college-age women to write for this blog and to recruit other young women to write for it.
One specific volunteer opportunity available is as a website monitor. Because www.independentgirls.org is working hard to keep girls as safe as possible online, we will monitor every submission to the website before it is posted. Girls will be able to submit their own writing (creative and expository), questions, and suggestions, and they will be able to post to message boards. They will also be able to submit videos. Anything that a girl submits must be approved by a website monitor (to ensure that it is appropriate and that no identifying information is shared in the post). I am looking for young women who would be interested in learning to be monitors and then spending a few hours a week monitoring and approving posts for the website.
Please contact Julie Simons if you are interested in getting involved with this project: julie@independentgirls.org/561-352-3511. Compensation will be per article published and will be based on both the length of the article and how ready for publication the article is upon receipt by Independent Girls.
I hope to hear from you and your students!
Best,
Julie Simons
Hi Leandra,
Thank you so much for your e-mail and for your interest in Independent Girls. I'm very excited that you want to share the information with your Girls Studies class. I appreciate your support and hope that either you or your students will be interested in contributing to the website. In addition to writing opportunities, there are also volunteer opportunities for college students if anyone is interested. Below is the announcement from WMST-L and some more detailed information about specific needs and volunteer opportunities:
Independent Girls, Inc. is a new nonprofit organization based in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, that aims to provide positive role models for girls, to get them thinking about goal setting and success, and to give them the tools to be self-confident, emotionally grounded, healthy, and independent. The main tool for doing this is a website, http://www.independentgirls.org (to be launched before the end of 2009). Each week the site will feature a different role model for girls as well as an article related to positive, healthy girls' development. The site will send regularly scheduled e-mails to girls and parents who subscribe. Independent Girls' goal is to create a counterbalance to the celebrity-saturated, image-based culture of 9 – 15 year old girls by providing girls with the strong, positive female role models who are currently missing from teen media and by addressing issues germane to girls’ healthy development.
Independent Girls seeks people to write original content for the website and weekly newsletters. Writers will identify, research, and write about topics and trends salient to 9 – 15 year old girls, with an emphasis on what is important/necessary to becoming a healthy, balanced, emotionally grounded, confident girls. Additional emphasis will be placed on understanding popular culture and developing the critical thinking skills necessary to becoming media literate/savvy.
Weekly articles should provide girls with information about things that girls deal with between the ages of 9 - 15, for example self-esteem, body image, puberty, bullying/ cyberbullying, healthy relationships, eating disorders, healthy eating/nutrition, exercise, time management/stress management, goal setting, leadership, cliques and popularity, frenemies, peer pressure, financial independence, internet safety, and media awareness. Articles should be between 250-500 words long; some topics may need to be covered in a series of articles. Articles should be informative and easy to read and, most importantly, must engage girls. Articles should answer questions that girls have (and perhaps even answer questions that girls didn't even know that they had).
The site will also feature blogs where writers can have on-going editorial columns about different topics.
The Independent Girls website is going to have several different parts. One is a dictionary of sorts -- something I'm calling Girl Power Words -- where terms that I think girls should know and understand will be listed and defined in girl-friendly language with girl-friendly examples. Examples of Girl Power Words are feminism, empower, sexism, racism, discrimination, etc. Another section of the site will devoted to women's history (which I'm calling HerStory), including timelines of women's and girls' "firsts," profiles of women inventors, and profiles of great historical women. There will also be a section of positive role models for girls, which will be both written and video profiles of women who have achieved success in various fields and have volunteered to share their stories with girls (I could see some of the oral histories that you mention fitting in nicely here). Lastly, the site will feature weekly articles, blogs, and polls/quizzes.
I'm looking for writers to help develop both the Girl Power Words and the HerStory sections of the site as well as writers for weekly articles about different issues. My vision for the weekly articles is that they will provide girls with information about things that girls deal with between the ages of 9 - 15 such as:
•self-esteem
•body image
•puberty
•eating disorders
•healthy eating/nutrition
•bullying/ cyberbullying and healthy relationships
•cliques/popularity and peer pressure
•time management/stress management
•goal setting
•leadership
•financial independence
•media awareness
I want the articles to be informative and easy to read and, most importantly, to engage girls. My hope is that the articles will answer questions that girls have (and perhaps even answer questions that girls didn't even know that they had).
I'd also like to have a blog that showcases college-age women and spotlights their experiences and stories as examples for middle and high school girls. These could be stories from when the college-age women were in middle and high school, including how they felt then and how they are able to see and process the experiences now, stories about what it's like to be in college, how you went about choosing a college or choosing a major, advice about friends/boys, etc. -- sort of like providing the younger girls with virtual big sisters who can help and role model growing up. I'm looking for college-age women to write for this blog and to recruit other young women to write for it.
One specific volunteer opportunity available is as a website monitor. Because www.independentgirls.org is working hard to keep girls as safe as possible online, we will monitor every submission to the website before it is posted. Girls will be able to submit their own writing (creative and expository), questions, and suggestions, and they will be able to post to message boards. They will also be able to submit videos. Anything that a girl submits must be approved by a website monitor (to ensure that it is appropriate and that no identifying information is shared in the post). I am looking for young women who would be interested in learning to be monitors and then spending a few hours a week monitoring and approving posts for the website.
Please contact Julie Simons if you are interested in getting involved with this project: julie@independentgirls.org/561-352-3511. Compensation will be per article published and will be based on both the length of the article and how ready for publication the article is upon receipt by Independent Girls.
I hope to hear from you and your students!
Best,
Julie Simons
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