EYES empowers young women

Shannon LeClair  

Times Reporter         

 

The Empowering Young women to Explore their Strength and confidence (EYES) program at the Youth Club of Strathmore has taken off since its inception last year. 

The program started as collaboration with Children and Family Services, Golden Hills School Division, FCSS and the Youth Club. In 2013 there was an identified group of girls that the different organizations thought would benefit from such a program, and so it was put together and has had positive results. 

The goal is to promote positive self-esteem and confidence in the young women within the community.  Each program is an hour and a half, once a week for a total of 12 weeks. 

The girls cover a number of topics including stress, anxiety, positive relationships, teen health issues, drug and alcohol use, domestic violence, high risk behaviours and promoting positive self-esteem. 

This year the girls had to do a community service project, and together with Youth Club coordinators, they decided to host a bottle drive. They managed to raise approximately $220, and with the money they bought girly stuff, makeup, scarves, perfume and nail polish to put into baskets to donate to the Community Crisis Society. 

“They chose the women’s shelter to help teens like themselves when they come into the shelter,” said Program Facilitator Hannah Magee. 

Each basket also contains a quote that means something to each girl and is meant to be an inspiration to the recipient of the basket. 

Last year the program started with one group of eight girls, and this year there are three groups. 

“I think it is going really well. Success is measured in different ways, the fact that the girls come every week and sometimes they come even when they don’t go to school to me shows that there’s a connection here,” said Shannon Zieman, program coordinator for the Youth Club.

“We just try to provide them with good information so they can make good choices and a big piece of what we do is helping them come up with safety plans and just information on how to keep themselves safe in our community, and then expanding a little bit more into the self-esteem and we’re going to do some work with employability and that sort of stuff.”

The EYES program consists of students coming from Crowther Memorial Junior High, Strathmore High School and Storefront school.