Becca's Adventures in Ghana: Smart Ladies 4 Success

The speed-get-to-know-you activity

Writing the negative thoughts

This is the new name of the girls club I started here at Bishop Forson School. We had our first meeting two weeks ago then last Friday was a holiday so yesterday was the second meeting. I am sure as the time goes on I will have more detailed and nuanced thoughts about it but for now it has just been fun. The girls are almost all in junior high and we have 15-20 attending. Because there has never been any sort or girls empowerment program here, and the language barrier is still an issue for higher level ideas and concepts, I am starting kind of slow and doing simple activities that I have used with younger girls. Last week I brought jump ropes that I got as a free giveaway at a festival in Atlanta that we used to do an “I Choose” exercise to set the expectation of the club. We brainstormed on big paper with colorful markers about what the name should be. This week we did almost like a speed-dating type activity where each girl had two minutes to talk to each other girl and find out something the same and something different about themselves. This was a crazy raucous activity with them almost doing exaggerated hello, how are you-s with huge high-fives, bumping shoulders, etc. Then we finished on the negative and positive self thoughts. I gave them all small cards to write down negative things they ever thought about themselves or others had told them. We then marched to the garbage pit and torn them up, stamped on them, and threw

them into the pit to be burned. We then came back and everyone had a card to write about all the things that were great about them. Here are excerpts of my favorites, shared with their permission by the Smart Ladies 4 Success.