Category: Key Principles for Change

Evaluation Process

How we collect data

Our organization’s mission is to provide related services to residents, clients, customers, patients, and our community. We evaluate our programs to ensure that these programs are indeed useful to the community. Our program evaluation is goal-based and include process, outcomes, effectiveness, formative, summative, and needs assessments.

To analyze the Wonderfully Made program, we process our data collection and evaluation including, program background, client, staff, and services. Moreover, the program must highlights the administrative supports, stakeholder satisfaction, and program efficiency. Cultural competence and ethical consideration must be addressed. These important steps allow mentors to suggest what particular processes relate to the specific results of successful outcomes.

Upon completion of every session, the strengths and limitations of process evaluation will be addressed to understand the overall factors that are critical to the success of this program.

We will be measuring successful outcomes by keeping track of hours spent on different tasks, activities, quizzes, videos, and participation.

The program assessment process includes reviewing the original targets and determining the degree to which they were accomplished. Since a list of completed tasks does not generally provide sufficient support to conclude that a substantial improvement has occurred, we will focus on further research in order to understand the complexities of various factors that relate to the effectiveness of the program and other intersecting factors that may impact the program. Finally, the program will end with a survey based on a brief questionnaire for participants in order to practice inclusion and diversity.

Benefits of Evaluation and Data Collection

The program will be externally evaluated by community stakeholders and the organization that the participants are attending. Thus, the focus of the evaluation is the participants and their success and positive well being. The main stakeholders of the program may include community members, non-profit organizations, the government, and private investors. We plan to engage stakeholders, such as community organizations, in the evaluation process by communicating the program results that can contribute to the well being of the community.

The evaluation process will not only strengthen the quality of the program but will also equip participants with skills, confidence, and professional development.

Writing a Program Evaluation

In order to write the program evaluation there should be some mandatory steps. For example, clearly stating what are the goals, description and objective of the program. Moreover, explaining the methods of data collection, if it is quantitative or qualitative. Furthermore, clearly list the evaluation questions and explain what would be the sources of evaluating that data.

Goals for Mentors

Wonderfully Made strives to develop and foster a respectful, collaborative, and inclusive environment for each other, our service users, and the community. Through this environment, we promote innovation and initiative and encourage our team to grow and expand within this environment. As a team we practice an inclusive and anti-oppressive practice that dismantles and addresses discrimination, harassment, victimization, and other forms of violence against each other, our service users, and the community. We acknowledge that we strive for perfection and, on that journey, we actively engage in self-reflective practice and improve our interpersonal skills.

We Desire to Inspire Change and Opportunity for Mentors and Mentees

The program aims to help address the barriers young Black girls encounter and offset the potential outcomes associated with them. To this end, the program has seven goals:

  1. providing mentors and mentees with the opportunity to give back to their own community,
  2. supporting and encouraging young Black girls to achieve their goals,
  3. helping young Black girls to acquire leadership skills, such as coaching, social skills, decision making, and emotional intelligence,
  4. connecting girls with professionals to increase their employability skills,
  5. improving their mental health and their overall well being,
  6. guiding girls towards greater health and wellness, and
  7. being a positive role model and representing hope and change.

Benefits our mentors and mentees experience

            The program aims to provide six core benefits: hope, inclusion, resiliency, acceptance, courage, and unconditional love. We believe each of these can help to the issues associated with many of the social barriers that young Black girls often encounter.

Hope

            Many young Black girls do not see themselves reflected in the world around them and may feel as though there are no opportunities for them. Thus, they may be reluctant to set high goals for themselves and instead settle for less fulfilling opportunities. the purpose of the mentor mentee program, then is to ensure that they are exposed to Black women who have excelled in various fields and can serve as a role model for them. this well ideally provide them with hope so that they set goals for themselves that will be fulfilling and rewarding.

Inclusion and Acceptance

            In addition to the lack of role models that young Black women often see in broader social contexts, there is also concern with inclusion. many young Black women feel excluded from the world around them. Thus, the purpose of the mentor mentee program is to ensure that these young women no that there is a place for them and that their needs and desires are important.

Resiliency and Courage

            Because young Black women will often encounter a variety of barriers and challenges in familial, social, academic, and professional contexts, it is critical that they develop their resiliency to take on these challenges and thrive rather than allow themselves to be discouraged by the barriers. To this end, the mentor mentee program seeks to build their resiliency.

 Culturally based Knowledge

Our culture based knowledge workshops will help mentors to facilitate in an environment that is welcoming, inclusive, understanding, and created on principles for living. The workshops will also explore cultural strengths, beliefs and practices using anti-oppress approaches that will guide young women to define their identities. Since our histories are richer than an experience of oppression. In the workshops, we will learn, explore, and understand our history together that was developed by our ancestors. We will employ and encourage knowledge to enhance wisdom based on our own truths, we will learn to develop our own identities to empower ourselves for becoming strong future leaders. Wonderfully Made seeks to address the lack of culturally appropriate services and programs that understand Black women and girls’ needs and are designed specifically to meet their needs. Our program aim seeks to build connections and foster healthy relationships with the mentor and mentee program that will assess the identified target issues with a pre and post surveys.

Understanding History

Our workshops will explore history outside of what is taught in schools, and highlight excellence with African, Caribbean, Indigenous, and Asian cultures. These workshops will examine and encourage critical thinking and analysis in understanding principles and beliefs incorporated in culture, and how society was developed. Some of these workshops will examine early beliefs and practices within culture, knowledge, and healing practices. Our elders share their stories, and histories with participants, and guide them to a greater understanding of the trials and successes of their ancestors.

Group Programs

The Wonderfully Made program seeks to support young Afrocentric and Indigenous girls and women who need to enhance their cultural knowledge and connections to their elders, as well as leadership and life skills based.  While our programs are culturally based, we are open to and encourage youth from all backgrounds to attend our group as their inclusion in culturally-based programs can provide them with the essential skills needed to work with others from diverse backgrounds as well as enhance their employability skills. Likewise, through our workshops, young girls can learn and enhance their skills by developing and discovering their identity, enhancing their emotional intelligence skills, supporting their healing from past trauma and difficult experiences, and establishing goals and leading by example.

Facilitating Workshops

Workshops are led initially by a subject matter expert and focus on teaching mentors how to develop key relationships, and support youth to grow and develop.

Our Key Learning Objectives

  • Successful mentor-mentee relationships are through positive changes and through mutual trust.
  • Mentors and mentees grow and develop while working together and participating in workshops.
  • The mentors are able to develop their own leadership styles that is unique with them.
  • Workshops will train youth how to manage challenges that may occur while mentoring.
  • Mentors build their capacity to develop include facilitation in delivering workshops
  • Mentors learn skills to communicate with diverse people, including stakeholders and partners
  • Mentors will learn how to encourage girls how to speak their truth, communicate their ideas, and generate discussions.

Mentors facilitate workshops in schools, community centres and special venues that reinforce:

  • Girls are princesses and treated as emerging queens
  • Girls have opportunity to connect with each other
  • Girls are encouraged to engage in cultural and artistic expression
  • Girls can define their own identity
  • Girls can choose their own gender identity and role

Values we promote is a holistic environment promoting wellness, safety, and inclusion

  • effective communication,
  • integrity
  • accountability,
  • professionalism,
  • taking responsibility,
  • building trust and
  • Mutual respect.

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The Mentorship Experience

The Importance of Creating Wonderfully Made Program

Young Black girls experience many barriers at the individual, cultural, and systemic/structural levels. Such barriers can take the form of negative feedback from others, which may take the form of a lack of identity support via social media, or systemic oppression.  As a result, they may feel disconnected from their peers, schools, communities, and even their families. The impact of this can be devastating. Even in milder cases it can lead to lowered self-esteem and self-confidence and in turn low school success rates. However, not only can there be more severe impacts, but these milder issues can snowball into far more debilitating issues. For example, low school success rates lead to fewer career opportunities and higher rates of criminalization, while increase trauma, stress, anxiety, and depression can lead to higher risks of mental health concerns and unwellness. A lack of self-esteem and self-confidence can also make young Black girls more vulnerable to abusive interpersonal relationships and even community violence and abuse.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?

Marianne Williams

Our Beneficiaries are our Communities

A beneficiary is described as the person who benefits from and experiences joy, wealth, resources, and access from a service, program, or intervention.

Our program recognizes that many young girl and women are impacted by racism, stereotypes, gender-based violence, biases, and discrimination. Thus, we seek to provide these young girls and women with mentorship, leadership, programs, and interventions that build resiliency, courage, options, and strength. Our Beneficiaries experience an intersection of identities, social location, and experiences. We have included a broad overview. We want to be cognizant of exclusion and want to include girls who fit this main description. Our curriculum content is primarily based on African-centric, Indigenous, and culturally-informed practices and belief and value systems. The primarily beneficiaries are Black girls between the ages of 12 and 29 years in the Durham Region and surrounding areas. Our mentors are young women between the ages of 16 and 29 years who fit their own criteria, willingness to grow. Our mentors and mentees have a shared connection of lived experiences. They have shared, lived experience of being in the child welfare and being involved in the youth justice system. We also will create content and provide leadership opportunities for Black and racialized girls who identity as members of the LGBTQ+ (Rainbow) community. Their shared commonality/dreams include the opportunity to grow/share their talents, be accepted, and feel loved and respected by others.

Mentorship

Young women who will have access to mentors, counsellors and life coaches who can support their development from a group to individual format. These young women will receive guidance, support, and knowledge that will empower change and holistic healing in their lives. We use holistic approaches because we see the body as interconnected with the mind and spirits. Our physical bodies are supported through nutrition, exercise, emotional expressions, healthy experiences, and social connections. We believe that our workshop must focus on education, leadership, cultural awareness, historical events, and spoken word. Furthermore, our spirits—the birthplace of our intuition, faith, and soul—is supported through workshops that help us generate the power within. When young women between the ages of 16 and 29 years feel prepared and have expressed a desire to contribute to the Wonderfully Made program, they are encouraged to join our core group member, project coordinator, and mentors in various program events. This may consist of attending or facilitating an in-school workshop, facilitating a Wonderfully Made support group, organizing an outreach project, and one-on-one sessions with a mentee. 

All workshop sessions are closed with a circle activity. Elders and mentors offer blessings of gratitude, hope, and resiliency to the mentees. The mentees highlight what they have learned, and how the group has supported them. Elders and healers are an important part of the session as a way to pass down blessings and hope to the generation, and the mentors and mentees who walk in their path. Each session always begins with land acknowledgement. Elders provide guidance to the mentees by providing experience to the circle.

Several of our group norms can be summarized in acronym the PREBaN.

The ‘P’ refers to staying present, which refers to engaging in active listening. Since some of the group conversations might be difficult and emotional, being supportive through patience and listening is one of the crucial goal of group work.

The ‘R’ refers to being respectful, which include the practice of cultural humility. This requires people to avoid generalizing about one’s own cultural norms.

The ‘E’ stands for staying engaged, which means being non-judgemental and allowing members to explain their unique experience.

The ‘B’ stands for understanding one’s own biases.

The ‘N’ represents the non-judgemental approach that we must always use. The facilitator’s role will be providing support, advice, guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modeling.

We are Building Mentors who Lead

There are seven qualities that a mentor should have:

  1. Relevant expertise or knowledge,
  2. Enthusiasm for sharing that expertise,
  3. A compassionate and respectful attitude,
  4. An eagerness to invest in others
  5. The ability to give honest and direct feedback,
  6. The ability to engage in reflective listening and empathize, and
  7. The willingness to be a sponsor.

Relevant Expertise or Knowledge

            One of the key qualities that a mentor should have is relevant expertise or knowledge. For example, a mentee who needs help with math requires a mentor who is familiar with math. Though a mentor who only has a cursory understanding of math could still make a positive contribution, they may either forward incorrect information that could inhibit or stunt the mentee’s development or provide inefficient support that slows the mentee’s progress. Hence, in such contexts, it is ideal to have a mentor who is an expert in math.

Enthusiasm for Sharing That Expertise

            The relevant expertise and knowledge is critical, it is likewise important that the mentor be enthusiasm stick to share this expertise. For instance, if a mentor has an advanced understanding of science and becomes easily annoyed when offering instruction to a mentee who struggles to comprehend lesson content, then the mentee well likely see the mentor’s frustration and feel as if they are a burden. This could undermine the mentor-mentee relationship.

A Compassionate and Respectful Attitude

            Just as it is important to be enthusiastic about sharing expertise, it is likewise important that mentors adopt a respectful attitude. If a mentor speaks in a way that insults the mentee, this could poison the mentor mentee relationship and create barriers to learning.

Eagerness to Invest in Others

            Possessing an eagerness invest in others is as important as the eagerness to share one’s knowledge or expertise. If a mentor does not recognize that the time they share with a mentee is an investment, they could lose patience with the process. If the mentee observes that the mentor is impatient, this could likewise poison the mentor mentee relationship and again inhibit the mentee’s development.

The Ability to Give Honest and Direct Feedback

            Mentors must also be able to give honest and direct feedback. If a mentee is struggling with understanding a concept and the mentor is reluctant or apprehensive about offering constructive criticism for fear of hurting the mentee’s feelings, this could create a barrier to the mentee’s development.

Reflective Listening and Empathy

            When offering direct feedback, it is likewise vital that the mentor be able to engage in reflective listening and demonstrate empathy. For instance, if the mentee is experiencing a barrier to the learning process and the mentor does not take the time to engage in reflective listening, they may not be able to identify the barrier and develop a solution to overcome that barrier. As a result, mentee’s development may again be inhibited. Likewise, if a mentor does not take the time to empathize with and understand the barrier, they may prove unwilling to develop a solution to it, which could also impede the mentee’s development.

Willingness to Be a Sponsor

            Finally, it is critical that all mentors be willing to be a sponsor. This involves being able to regularly and consistently set aside time to dedicate mentees and honoring the schedule by being present and punctual. If mentees notice that their mentors often cancel there’s scheduled appointments or show up late, then they may infer that they are not a priority to the mentor and that they are not important. This could inadvertently perpetuate many of the barriers that mentees experience and undermine the mentor mentee relationship.

Core Skills

Both mentors and mentees should utilize some core skills in their mentoring partnerships. Such as, encouraging, building trust, active listening, setting boundaries, working towards assigned goals, open door policy and providing constructive feedback.

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Wonderfully Made Visions

Discussing our Goals

Why Wonderfully Made?

Wonderfully Made program seeks to empower and motivate young women to develop the interpersonal skills. Sessions will be offered every two weeks over five months for a total of ten workshops. The mission of this program corresponds to the agency’s mission of developing and fostering a respectful, collaborative and inclusive environment for each other, and the community. Likewise, practising an inclusive and anti-oppressive practice which dismantles and addresses discrimination, harassment, victimization, and other forms of violence against each other, service users, and the community.

Some staff are volunteers and others are program coordinators, and each has been working in the field for different lengths of time, some staff have different and/or more experience than others. This program will specifically have one program outreach and four interns from the masters and bachelors of social work programs or diploma programs. This will help provide input and perspective. The youth outreach must be experienced and have been at the agency for more than two years to be able to facilitate the workshops. Program staff need to follow proper code of ethics of confidentiality and respect the inherent rights and dignity of all persons (CASW Code of Ethics, 2020). Those with a social work background are aware of this; however, other staff will need to undergo training of the code in order to help with the program. All program staff and “professionals should be culturally competent when operating in social service settings” (Nadan, 2017, p. 76). This means that facilitators should have the knowledge of oppressive systems and power structures that marginalize young Black girls. Facilitators should also adopt strength based and anti-oppressive frameworks that are filtered through a feminist lens.

Wonderfully Made develops culturally-informed, holistic programs that inspires girls to achieve their best outcomes with guidance from girls who look like and represent them.

During session days, staff will divide their time up between three tasks: face-to-face contact, which will comprise approximately 75% of their time; supervision and consultation, which will comprise approximately 25%; and advocacy, which will comprise approximately 5% of their time. This overall use of workers’ time places more emphasis on providing direct support to participants. However, on non-session days, the workers’ time will be divided differently: 35% will be dedicate to report writing, 20% to telephone contact, 20% to consultations, 15% to advocacy, and 10% to face-to-face contact. This prioritizes back end work to help the participants to succeed while still maintaining contact with participants to further their outcomes.

Program Interventions and Activities

The program activities include workshops a variety of subjects, including eating well and staying healthy, self-care, mindfulness, and resilience. The workshops will cover the topics that directly affect Black girls’ mental health, such as isolation, social justice, and the ability to cope with stigma and intimate partner violence (IPV).

To enhance the professional identity, résumé and cover letter training will be offered for mentors. The training workshops session will focus on employment to identify challenges that young Black women encounter when applying for jobs. Résumé and cover letter workshops can help women write their own effective résumés and cover letters. The workshops will be held once every two weeks, and there will be one-on-one counselling sessions provided if participants need additional information.

Participants can attend as many workshops as they wish, and participate in the rites of passage program. We understand that mentors lives may change, and thus once they enter the program they continue to remain involved as much as they wish. Mentors are encouraged to remain in the program for a minimum of one year. Mentees can remain involved from 12 years old, until they wish to become mentors at 16 years old.

Satisfaction of the Program and the Stakeholders

Once the participants have completed the program, they will be given a program evaluation survey. The survey will provide a general questionnaire about the program and the service delivery. By conducting the survey, the family ourteach will be able to implement changes to the program according to the recommendation mentioned by the participants for the next cohort. Through the success of the cohort within the program, the stakeholder satisfaction will increase. For example, implementing these changes will improve the quality of the program and will allow program to reach its mission goals and program objective. The participants will also be given a survey after completing their placement. This will give the outreach staff a chance to evaluate the placement, the readiness of the participants, and whether or not the workshops met their learning needs. These measures of satisfaction will help program coordinators evaluate the effectiveness of the placement in conjunction with the material covered within the workshops. By making the necessary changes and adapting to the needs of the cohort, the program can be more efficient and effective. In addition, the social workers will also provide the participants with support during and after the completing of the program, though the support will vary depending on the participant’s needs.

Data Collection Methods

Quantitative data can indicate how many participants completed the program and how many were able to get a job at a livable wage. Quantitative information is often expressed in terms of percentages, ratios or prices, and quantitative methods of data collection provide assessment for results, rating scale surveys, and methods of observation that count how many times something has occurred (Smart, 2020). The data collection will include a rating scale survey to determine how many participants reported getting benefited. Qualitative data will also be implemented as it can collect feedback from participants regarding the program and what they found helpful or challenging.

Cultural Appropriateness and Ethical Considerations

Since we are focusing on young Black, Indigenous and racialized women, it is important to ensure that evaluation methods are relevant and appropriate. For example, the assessment tools used, or questionnaires could be first implemented as pilot methods with participants to improve them according to the participants’ suggestions. Since our participants might be from different racial backgrounds, it is important to have participants’ perspective on assessments and ensure we use tools that are appropriate (Smart, 2020). The principles for ethical conduct of the Canadian assessment society indicate that evaluators should be culturally and socially sensitive to the stakeholders in an appropriate manner to this environment (Canadian Evaluation Society, 2014). Ethical considerations are essential when working on data collection and involving stakeholders as part of the evaluation process (Anderson Draper, 2006). For example, when working with other community organizations, it is important to keep participants’ personal information confidential. This program aims to minimize any ethical issues, and, because participation is entirely voluntary, participants will be able to discontinue participating with no consequences at any time. Moreover, the questions asked in questionnaires or surveys are not intended to be sensitive where it may trigger emotions.

The Story of Wonderfully Made

Why we do what we do, who we service, and why young people are powerful agents of change?

We developed Wonderfully Made due to the lack of appropriate services for Black and racialized girls, and to address the barriers they experience their daily lives. Black girls and young women feel disconnected from others. In the media, they are bombarded with images that either do not reflect or represent them or their identity or that misrepresent them and promote harmful stereotypes. In schools, Black girls often do not have positive connections and do not see themselves reflected in the teaching who are supposed to support them. Moreover, they are not represented thoroughly in the curriculum and are therefore at risk for poorer outcomes, including low self-esteem, disengagement from community, and mental health challenges. Furthermore Black girls and women experience barriers to their education and employment goals due to systemic racism, poverty, lack of support, and exposure to high risk communities.

Interested, and want to learn more?

We are always looking for mentors (ages 16 to 29), professional mentors (adult women in their field), and mentees to join Wonderfully Made. Consider connecting with us to learn more or apply.

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Beneficiaries

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A beneficiary is described as the person who benefits from and experiences joy, wealth, resources, and access from a service, program, or intervention.

Our beneficiaries are you!

We seek to provide mentorship, leadership, programs and interventions that build: resiliency, courage, options, and strength from girls impacted by racism, stereotypes, gender-based violence, biases, and discrimination.

Our Beneficiaries experience an intersection of identities, social location, and experiences. We have included a broad overview. We want to be cognizant of exclusion and want to include girls who fit this main description. Our curriculum content is primarily based on African-centric, Indigenous, and culturally-informed practices and belief and value systems. The primarily beneficiaries are Black girls aged 12 to 29years old in Durham Region and surrounding area. Our mentors are young women aged 16-29 who fit their own criteria, willingness to grow. Our mentors and mentees have a shared connection of lived experiences.They have shared , lived experience of being in the child welfare and being involved in the youth justice system. We also will create content and provide leadership opportunities for Black and racialized girls who identity as LBTQ2s. Their shared commonality/dreams are: opportunity to grow/share their talents, seeking acceptance, feeling loved, and respected by others.

Barriers our girls experience

  • negative feedback from others
  • systemic oppression
  • feeling disconnected from their family
  • feeling disconnected from their schools and communities
  • lack of identity support through social media
  • lowered self-esteem and self-confidence
  • traumatic stress, anxiety and depression
  • higher rates of criminalization
  • low school success rates
  • risk of abusive interpersonal relationships
  • risk of community violence and abuse
  • higher risk of mental health concerns and unwellness

Benefits our mentors and mentees experience

Hope

Inclusion

Resiliency

Acceptance

Courage

Unconditional Love

We desire to inspire change and opportunity for mentors and mentees to:

  • the opportunity to give back to their own community
  • supporting and encouraging younger girls to achieve their goals,
  • acquiring leadership skills such as coaching, social skills, decision making and emotional intelligence.
  • connecting girls with professionals to increase their employability skills,
  • improving their mental health, and their overall well being
  • guiding girls towards greater health and wellness
  • being a positive role model and representing hope and change

Black Girls Today

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Every organization has a story that explains our reasons for being here, in this place, at this time. Our story began with an idea, generated five years ago, and nurtured by experiences, elders, and key opportunities. To learn more about our story visit:

The Story of Wonderfully Made

Why we do what we do, who we service, and why young people are powerful agents of change.

Our story
Core members

We developed Wonderfully Made and Girls who Lead due to the lack of appropriate services for Black girls, and to address the barriers they experience their daily lives. Black girls and young women feel disconnected from others. In the media, they are bombarded with images that do not represent them or their identity. In schools, Black girls often do not have positive connections, are not exposed to teachers who look like them. They are not represented thoroughly in the curriculum, therefore they are at risk for poorer outcomes (low self-esteem, disengagement from community, mental health challenges). Furthermore Black girls and women have difficulties with achieving their education and employment goals due to systemic racism, poverty, lack of support, exposure to high risk communities and home life.

Other Ontario statistics report that Black girls are disproportionately represented in child welfare. During their experience in child welfare, black girls and women are disconnected from their culture, their families, their faith-based beliefs and spirituality, and their traditions. They are less likely than other youth to return to their home communities. Many Black girls and women reside in homes where there is limited support in their families due to their parents’ need to provide for the family, disconnection between youth and their parents, and lack of parents’ understanding of issues that impact their lives. Statistics also show that Black youth experience higher rates of disproportionate numbers in the criminal justice system. These statistics do not indicate that Black people are more violent, it means they are over-policed, are diverted away from diversion programs, and are falsely accused of crimes. It means that their communities lack the meaningful representation of mentors, programs, and interventions designed to create greater opportunities of success. Further, our Black girls are not given the equal opportunity to be successful in school, or are encouraged to pursue careers in STEM programs, skilled trades or university and graduate programs.

Wonderfully Made seeks to address the lack of culturally appropriate services and programs that understand Black women and girls’ needs and are designed specifically to meet their needs. Our program aim seeks to build connections and foster healthy relationships with the
mentor and mentee program that will assess the identified target issues with a pre and post surveys.

In the United States, research with Black and
Latino students demonstrate that mentorship programs significantly improve young people’s engagement in services. Further, research shows that group programs help build youth’s connections in their community, and representation in groups improve success.

Join our initiative as a:

Mentor

Key Stakeholder

Partner

Elder

Workshop Facilitator

Be the change you wish to see in our community

Creating Change for Girls

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This module teaches mentors the benefits and risks to developing programs for girls, and ways to address change but also anticipating the struggles that may also exist.

Background: Wonderfully Made is directed at bridging the gap between intent and action of providing appropriate mentorship for girls aged 12 to 29 years. As the program builds, we hope to develop programming that supports girls as young as 4 years old.

Our unique focus:

  • Black girls who have experienced gaps in services that don’t focus on their specific needs that are influenced by systemic racism, biases, stereotypes, and discrimination.
  • Generating the power of knowledge and wisdom inherent in our culture, our history, our ancestors, and current affairs.

To achieve this, the program was designed so that women of colour can grow to aspire to see images of beauty, intelligence and talent that fits with their own identity.

Mariyam

Workshop Designs:

The intervention activities included will be a 2 to 3-hour workshop that cover topics ranging from healthy body image, appreciating diversity, communication and social interaction. These workshops will be delivered through collaborative and interactive arts to build and develop mentor and mentee relationships.

Expected Change Outcomes

This program would help create change in three levels.

Short-term outcomes focus on learning about healthy body images, creating difference and diversity, developing communication skills, making friends and creating positive group cohesion. This will happen through the completion of workshops and the training given to the mentors.

Future desired outcomes: mentees and mentors will demonstrate by effective communication with peers. They will critically examining messages of body images in the media and empowering women of colour.

Sustainable outcomes of change: The long-term outcomes will focus on creating strong community ties between girls of varying ages, celebrating difference of all women and creating leaders who are healthy, safe and ready to learn.

We assume that our program:              

The internal assumptions that are found within this program is that in order for the program to function, there needs to have an effective referral system that allows the girls to connect with the program. Another assumption is the continued availability of mentors and core group members. As the mentors are volunteers, there is a chance of continued turnover. Continued support of team ensures the success of the program. One other assumption that is required is creating a curriculum for the program that engages the participants and allows for growth.

The external assumptions is that any program needs access to resources including space and funding for continuation. These are barriers that can limit the program’s success. There can even be demographic barriers, where the location of the program does not meet the needs of the participants. Other assumptions include changes in the larger economy and policies that are created that may affect the families in the program.     

We need you! Programs like Wonderfully Made and Girls who Lead rely upon our key stakeholders, our community, and individuals who believe in our mission, and our drive as young people to achieve goals and make sustainable change.

Become a support, elder or advocate

Our program is seeking organizations, elders, and mentors who can mentor our core group members and mentors to successfully build our program. Consider joining, supporting our initiative and making referrals.

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