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Empowerment Club helps build social awareness and boost confidence among students

March 20, 2015 by DMD

Since September of this school year, Mother of Sorrows has offered a Youth Empowerment Club. The club meets weekly on Mondays, and its membership includes approximately 14 6th-8th grade girls. Miss Ferguson, teacher’s aide and year-long volunteer from The Vincentian Service Corps West, started the group for the purpose of empowering students – to help them find and use their voices, know who they are, and build their confidence and self-esteem.

According to Miss Ferguson, Empowerment Club is a safe space for students to be themselves as they become informed about the outside world, become aware of social pressures that exist in society, and explore what it means to be empowered by one another. Students share their talents, gifts, abilities and ideas as they participate in a variety of activities and exercises that highlight their creativity and their unique personalities.

Two of such activities have been a Theatre of Hearts/Youth First workshop and an eggshell canvas painting project. Theatre of Hearts/Youth First is a nonprofit organization that, among other things, works to build self-esteem and self-confidence through standards-based multidisciplinary arts educational programs. (To learn more about Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, please visit the organization’s website.) Actress Galyn Görg, on behalf of Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, led Empowerment Club members through two workshops that used theater games, improvisational exercises and acting techniques as a foundation for character building, developing imagination, educational enrichment and self-esteem enhancement. The workshops were a hit with all student participants. Thank you to Galyn Görg for creating such a positive and empowering experience for our students!

The second activity that greatly resonated with students was an eggshell canvas painting activity in which Empowerment Club members learned about the meaning and emotions connected to various colors and the power of art as expression and a form of a healthy stress reliever. After learning about the colors’ meanings, each student chose a color that best represented her emotions, and was able to throw an egg shell filled with that color of paint at a canvas to help create a beautiful group art piece. To view photos from the creation of the art piece, please see the photo gallery below.

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