Seaside/Marina Seaside City Council Rough Talk - for Maraia

Seaside /Marina Girls - 

Thursday 6:30 at Seaside City Hall

Maraia, 

Try this out....Change it so it works for you....And make sure it's not more than 7 minutes...Thanks

Thank you so much for making the time on your agenda to listen to girls.



Our project, Girls Health in Girls Hands, is a county-wide, girl-led action research project designed to develop a Girls Health Action Plan. This pretty much means that, with the knowledge we gather from researching girls across the County ranging in age from 9 to 18, we will create recommendations for changes to public policy and organizational and community practices. These recommendations will be made so that girls are better informed about health and receive better support and services - in ways that girls will both listen and use the support and services.



 

In addition to creating this Health Action Plan, we as youth leaders also gain leadership and civic engagement skills which prepares us to become community leaders like you. By doing this we claim a voice for ourselves and the rest of the girls in the community in the makings of public policy. 

Our mission is to see changes made in public policy so that girls can lead healthy lives and make positive decisions.

 

Ultimately we want to live in communities that support girls health and be healthier.

 

 

There are 5 teams throughout the county.  We are the Seaside / Marina Girl Leadership team and I would like to introduce the members that are here:

 

(Girls Names)

 

Girls Health in Girls Hands is a research project of the Women’s Fund of Monterey County (which is a program of the Community Foundation for Monterey County).  The Women’s Fund is committed to advocating for a community that is supportive of girls’ health. The program is funded by the California Endowment.

 

Each team began their time together this fall, learning about action research, public policy, and facilitation skills. Most importantly we learned a lot about each other and ourselves. We developed surveys and interview protocol.  We are beginning our research phase and anticipate having the Action Plan created by May.  We then plan on coming back to visit you to share the information in June.

 

 

 

We’re off to a great start and have had tremendous support from Seaside High School Administration and Coach Avila.

 

We have set up a website, a MySpace page, a Facebook page, and a blogspot so that our teams can communicate and other girls can reach us. We have an online survey available for girls to complete.

 

In December, Coach Avila invited us into all of the Seaside High health classes, to tell the girls what we were doing and to start our research. We set up games, ran focus groups, did surveys, and gave each girl a health promise bracelet. We also gave them an index card so they can write down anything they still wanted to know or anything they want to comment on. After the first period, students came rushing into class prepared and excited for what we were going to do. A lot of the girls LOVED what we did and wished they could’ve had someone do what we did for them in their earlier ages. Coach Avila, the Seaside High health teacher, has insisted that we come back for the second semester.

 

During one of our groups, Mr. Nunez, Seaside High’s Vice Principle, stopped by. He was so impressed by what we were doing that he invited us to the counselor’s meeting. The counselors were so impressed that they told us they wanted to be on our team and offered to work with us girls to help improve the girls of the community’s health and their behaviors.

 

We have also presented to the Girls Health in Girls Hands Steering Committee.

 

We will continue our outreach and research, in the schools, churches, and other community groups.  We are also starting to develop a strategy for gathering information from adult stakeholders – like parents, teachers and other adults with interest in and knowledge of girls’ health.  

We hope that you each would be available for a quick interview in the next month or so. And  - we hope that we will be able to come back and present our findings when we're done our research in June.