By Matt Sookram
Do we limit girls?
It’s a question Always asked in an advertisement published last July, and it was asked again on Wednesday to a group of girls in grades 7-10 at Chippewa High School.
The group was taking part in the second annual Worthy Devotion Day – aimed at celebrating self-love through hands-on real life self-esteem tools.
“How often do we get to have girls this age right there with us, listening to this kind of a message?” says Abbey Thompson, who created the event as a senior project last year and is now attending Nipissing University.
“That’s such a crucial time in their life and we thought by getting them started off by knowing what’s in the community, what resources they have access to, we hope they can take at least one away and say, ‘I felt great during that workshop I’m going to seek that out, when I need it.”’
The various workshops included Zumba, meditation, self-defence, healthy eating tips and more. Thompson says, “The North Bay community has been really supportive of this and I haven’t gotten a single no when I’ve asked people to come help out. That experience alone, the support for it, shows how important this event is.”
In the Always ad they ask girls of various ages and ethnicities if girls are limited, and one young girl comments, “I can’t really rescue anybody. It’s always the boys who rescue the girls in the stories.”
The girls in the ad are then asked to write on cardboard boxes all the things they were told girls can’t do, or what society wants girls to be; then they destroy those boxes. Thompson had the girls at Chippewa do the same.
Girls in Grade 9 and 10 at Chippewa Secondary School write down things they were told they could never do or never be on small paper cubes, before crushing those cubes, during Worthy Devotion Day on Wednesday.
“That’s the message we want to say, every morning you should start off by crushing that box by acknowledging what limits you and knowing it exists but not letting it affect you.”
Grade 12 student Cassy Beaudry was helping Thompson run the event and she says, “Girls our age need to be shown they can create impressions on so many people with positive impacts.”
Beaudry acknowledges not every day for today’s youth is a walk in the park, “They’re going to run into so many things, especially in high school, mean people, hard to deal with situations. I think by showing them now there are people who have gone through it and have come out better on the other side, they will learn its possible to get through it.”
Beaudry says is especially important to use social media platforms to promote that message, “They see and use social media every day. Look at Instagram, it wants you to edit the picture of yourself and change how you look. We’re just telling them you don’t have to do that, you’re perfect the way you are. No matter what the media is trying to portray to you, or what people say is right or wrong, it’s how you want to feel and act and look that’s important.
“It’s something everyone goes through but nobody talks about. It’s really negative. People don’t like themselves but we need to push each other to grow this kind of event more and more.”
Thompson agrees the negative messages need to come to an end.
“These are the issues that need to be talked about. We think that vulnerability on our part can be such an impactful aspect of today and we wanted to bring that to them.”
It’s somewhat surprising it took a grade 12 student to realize this was needed in schools, and as of right now this is only being done at Chippewa in North Bay. Worthy Devotion Day started as a senior year project and has rolled into an important educational experience.
Thompson says “One of the biggest things that I struggled with was my self-love and my self-esteem and I know a lot of people deal with that and it’s so evident in all the younger grades so I thought, what can we do to change it?”
The goal of her project was to do something that would have a lasting impact on the school...an A+ for Ms. Thompson as Worthy Devotion day next year will also involve the other gender.
“Boys will be included next year. That’s one of the things I’ve been asked about the most. We kind of have a five year plan and I personally can understand what girls go through, so the first two years we’ve focused on that and year three we’ll have some boys consultants.”
