Service Learning Proposal

Service Learning Proposal for Young Women Leaders Program
By: Keysha R., Samantha D., Kassie M., Genesis A.
February 10, 2011
Meredith Tweed
WST 3015-001

Community Partner Profile
Community Partner: Young Women Leaders Program
Address: 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816
Contact: 407-823-6502
Mission Statement: “The Young Women Leaders Program is a mentoring program sponsored by the UCF Women’s Studies Program . . . YWLP promotes middle school girls’ leadership abilities, pairing collegiate women with middle school girls. In mentoring pairs and small groups of Big and Little Sisters, participants focus on learning competence and autonomy, independent thinking, empowerment, self-esteem, and encouraging girls to think about their futures.” (http://womensstudies.cah.ucf.edu/ywlp/)
Political and/or Social Basis for Organization: As stated above, the basis for the organization is to promote positive self-image and encourage leadership skills in young girls who are at an important part of their developmental stages.
Community Needs: Members of the YWLP will benefit from extra assistance organizing and running alumni events and especially UCF day in the form of bringing extra food, spreading the word, running tables, etc.

The Proposal
TO: Meredith Tweed
FROM: Keysha R., Samantha D., Kassie M., Genesis A.
DATE: February 10, 2011
RE: Proposal to discuss the benefit of the Young Women Leaders Program

The following is a proposal to outline the needs, rational and problem-solving that the Young Women Leaders Program addresses. The following proposal showcases the objective of the program, the work mentors plan to do, a schedule of meetings and activities planned, as well as the rationale for its inclusion in WST 3015.

The Young Women Leaders Program (YWLP) addresses a problem amongst young women and allows for an opportunity to enhance the self-esteem of middle school girls and promote their leadership abilities. “Leadership, in this context, is conceptualized broadly as the ability to guide oneself first, and others secondarily, on issues that are important to one’s self worth”.

YWLP is an amazing program that will allow these young girls to face and discuss any issues and in so, better prepare them for a transition into high school. Every other week, big and little sisters meet and have an opportunity to spend quality time as well as, partake in fun activities with fellow little’s.


Plan Proposal
The YWLP Big Sister program runs throughout the entire semester and thus ensures ample time and opportunities to make an impact on the young girls with whom we will be working. The YWLP meetings are held weekly, with every other Wednesday’s meetings including the little sisters. Our proposal for this service learning project is fairly simple: we hope that through our work and interaction with the little sisters we will inspire them to be independent thinkers, to have a healthy sense of self-worth, to feel empowered and to learn leadership skills.

Besides the biweekly meetings with the little sisters, YWLP members make commitments to keep in contact with them during the time between meetings and even to spend time with them outside of the confines of the meetings if their parents or guardians allow it. There are also several scheduled YWLP alumni events for big and little sisters to attend. In February we are having an Around the World Potluck and UCF Day—a Saturday dedicated to showing our little sisters around the UCF campus—and in April we have events such as Jewelry Making and Girl Power Movie Night.

The members of YWLP genuinely believe in this cause, and it’s that kind of positive attitude and dedication that will no doubt have an impact on the young girls we are mentoring.

Rationale for Women’s Studies
The issues and goals tackled by the YWLP Big Sister mentoring program are based almost solely in third-wave feminism, which “emphasizes multiple identities, ambiguities, and contradictions” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 14). The women in YWLP are driven, smart, and—probably most importantly—diverse. Through this, we are able to show the younger girls in the program that none of these labels are negative for women, hopefully without it feeling like we are shoving the message down their throats.

The majority of the YWLP program works on the micro level; this is the level analyzes “the relationship among people and issues as seen from a personal or individual standpoint” (Kirk and Okazawa G-4). In other words, we in the program work with the younger girls to help them develop a healthy identity and sense of self-worth. This is especially important at their ages (between 12 and 13) because it is around this time that girls really begin to define themselves, often based on what they see in the media and through interactions with peers and authority figures. By extension, this program also could help on the meso, or community, level, by helping the girls to figure out how they want to be defined by their peers through defining themselves first.

Action
We all have attended the first initial meeting and have been trained with the YWLP rules and protocols for the middle school. Not only that, we all have been assigned our Little Sisters in three different middle schools Tuskawilla Middle School, South Seminole Middle School and Lawton Chiles Middle School. Within these three middle schools, we, the Big Sisters would be promoting learning, competence and autonomy to all the Littles. In these meetings we would be interacting with our Littles, doing some themed activities of the day with them, eat some food, and talk about issues through a discussion.

We would not only attend the interchangeable bi weekly Big and Little meetings, we would also participate on extracurricular events that would help the Littles from different middle schools interact and mingle.

Timeline
The Young Women Leaders Program is a semester wide commitment, and will include training, and meetings between the big sister mentors, and our little sister mentees. The mentors will also participate in alumni events to provide enrichment for their little sisters as well as a UCF day which will take place during the weekend, and focus on uplifting and providing the mentees with powerful positive knowledge that will help them be successful in their futures. Alumni events were created to provide extra time outside of mentoring meetings for bonding with little sisters, and for little sisters of multiple schools to interact with each other. The following is a tentative schedule of the events where the YWLP members will be mentoring with the little sisters or working on creating activities that will provide them with an avenue where they can think outside of the box.

*All big sister and little sister meetings are from 3:15-4:45pm

Sat January 15, 2011-Training Day 10-3pm
Jan 17-21, 2011-Fingerprinting Week
January 26, 2011- Big Sister Meeting
February 2, 2011-Little Sister Meeting
February 9, 2011-Big Sister Meeting
February 13, 2011-Around the World Potluck 4-6pm (alumni event)
February 16, 2011-Little Sister Meeting
February 23, 2011- Big Sister Meeting
February 26, 2011- UCF Day
March 2, 2011-Little Sister Meeting
March 16, 2011-Big Sister Meeting
March 23, 2011-Big Sister Meeting
March 30, 2011- Little Sister Meeting
April 2, 2011-Jewlery Making 2-4pm (alumni event)
April 6, 2011-Little Sister Meeting
April 9, 2011-Heavenly Hoofs (alumni event)
April 13, 2011-Big Sister Meeting
April 17, 2011-Girl Power Meeting Night 4-7pm (alumni event)
April 20, 2011-Little Sister Meeting

Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

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