Friday Feminist Fave: Girls’ Leadership Workshop

I was going to post this yesterday as a Thank You Thursday, but then I ran out of time; hence, it’s a Friday Feminist Fave!
Last year, Courtney posted on Eleanor Roosevelt , a phenomenal activist in her own right and an important foremother of the second wave. I’m a big ER fan, too, for those reasons and for one other reason: the Girls’ Leadership Workshop.
When I was fifteen, I attended the Girls’ Leadership Workshop, or GLW, at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, the place that was once Eleanor’s private home. GLW is a nine-day summer feminist leadership program for teen girls entering grades ten and eleven. It’s a phenomenal program, packed with workshops with incredible social justice and human rights activists, including two days in NYC to meet with women leaders at UN agencies and feminist organizations.
For me, though, the best part of GLW was becoming a part of an amazing group of feminist teens. The thirty participants at my session hailed from everywhere from Hawaii to Turkey; I’ve never been in a community of young women who come from such different backgrounds yet share such strong enthusiasm for social change. Through GLW, I gained several lifelong friends, a tight-knit group of fellow change-makers who can empathize better than anyone else with the struggles of a young feminist activist.
If you’re a girl currently in grades nine or ten — or know a girl who could use a community of young, kick-ass feminists — I highly recommend checking out GLW. (Applications for summer 2009 are due February 13; 90 participants will be selected from hundreds of applicants.) My GLW friends and I all agree: GLW was the most amazing nine days of our life.