Teaching girls the power of good friendships

Times Reporter    

 

A workshop aimed at helping girls have healthier friendships is coming to Strathmore on Jan. 25. GirlPower began in Calgary around five years ago, and today is an internationally recognized company. It was started by Dana Kerford, a Calgary teacher and has programs for girls in Grades 1 to 6.

“Our goal is to help girls understand what is normal in friendships and how to comfortably manage conflict so that they can maintain healthy friendships,” said GirlPower Facilitator Tania O’Neill.

“We try to give girls language and tools to work out what we call friendship fires.”

In Strathmore there are two workshops coming. The first workshop is Fuzzies and Friends. In this workshop, which is for girls in Grades 1 and 2 and their parents, the girls will learn the friendship basics. They will learn about friendship facts, the qualities of a true friend and how to use the Friend-O-Meter to understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy friendships. 

“We want girls to understand that if they are feeling not so good about themselves when they are with someone, or maybe even when they’re not, then that might be a bit of an unhealthy friendship. Our advice would be to decrease their time with them, so increase their dose of healthy friendships, decrease the unhealthy ones,” said O’Neill. 

She explained that it doesn’t mean they have to end a friendship, but you don’t want to spend all your time with them either if it is unhealthy.  The teddy bears are used to help with role-playing some different scenarios. 

The Heart of Friendship for Grades 3 and 4 is a very similar workshop but it also discusses the various ways girls can be mean and teaches skills on how to stand up for yourself with a friend and different skills on standing up to a bully. 

“We’re all guilty when we’ve said ‘oh just ignore it.’ We hear 100 per cent of the time that that does not work so we want to give the parents and the girls something else, some other tool,’ said O’Neill. 

“We’re teaching them how to stand up for themselves, in a respectful way.”

Christine Petovello is the one who requested that Girl Power come to Strathmore to help her six-year-old daughter.

“A friend of mine had told me how it helped her daughter express herself and learn to stand up for herself and it’s my hope that my quiet, shy daughter can learn some skills to help bring out some confidence,” said Petovello.

If the girls can learn these skills at a young age and begin developing them, then as they get older it will hopefully transfer into romantic relationships and work relationships.  Tickets can be purchased to either workshop by going to www.urstrong.com/GirlPower/Events/. Tickets include the workshop, handouts and a GirlPower pencil and sticker. Fuzzies and Friends is $30 per person. The Heart of Friendship is $35 per girls. Both workshops will be held on Jan. 25.