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GEN's Voice
Issue 10
April 2002
In This Issue:
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GENaustin's web site now features current programs on the home page. Go to www.GENaustin.org anytime to see what events are coming up. Here's what's going on in April:
Girl-to-Girl: Girl Friends, Girl Foes
Peer relationships are everything in Middle School. When they're good, they're very, very good. When they're bad....Girls may express their aggression through hurtful words, gossip and other forms of relational violence that can damage girls emotionally. Two experienced school counselors, Carolyn Brooks and Cindy Austin, and a panel of high school girls will share insight and successful strategies for dealing with ways girls love, hurt, and can heal each other.
Thursday, April 4, 7 - 8:30 p.m., O'Henry Middle School, library, 2610 W. Tenth (10th and Exposition in Tarrytown)
Are You Listening To Me? by Judy Farmer, Ex. Dir. Texas Partnership for Education
Attend this popular session and discover more effective ways to communicate with your pre-teen and adolescent daughters. Walk in her shoes and help her feel heard and understood. Through group interaction and activities, parents will leave the workshop more prepared to communicate effectively with the important people in their lives.
Monday, April 8, 7 - 8:30 p.m., West Ridge Middle School, library, 19201 Scenic Bluff Dr. (off Bee Cave Rd. in Barton Creek West)
Finding the Perfect Volunteer Opportunity for Teens by Alissa Magrum, Texas Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service
Studies have shown that volunteering can benefit both physical and mental health. Volunteering can be especially important for adolescent girls (and boys), as it helps them become more aware of the world outside their own and can provide them a sense of belonging to their communities. Find out about the variety of volunteer opportunities for girls and boys that are available in the Austin area and how to get involved. Great summer vacation ideas!
Thursday, April 25, 3:30 - 5 p.m., Fulmore Middle School (Check office for location), 201 Mary (Off S. Congress at Mary)
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Spotlight On One of GENaustin's Amazing Volunteers |
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We are lucky to have so many highly talented and motivated volunteers at GENaustin, one of whom is our web master extraordinaire, Ileana Abounader. Ileana has been volunteering with the Girls Empowerment Network since January 2000, but this past year really gave her all to enhancing the GENaustin web site into an interactive experience for girls and their community.
As the co-chair of the Web Site Committee, this dedicated volunteer gave over 25 hours of her free time per week to make sure the web site would be up by its deadline. Besides coding the web site, Ileana lead a team of web developers through two re-launches of the site. Ileana kept these hard-working individuals motivated and energized the entire time, mostly through her contagious enthusiasm for helping adolescent girls.
The web site launch has been an extraordinary success. Not only did the functionality of the site improve, but it dramatically increased GENaustin's reach into the Austin community. The web site also directly reaches out to adolescent girls by providing a confidential forum where girls can anonymously ask any questions they may have and get them answered by experts.
Recently, Ileana has been publicly recognized for her efforts on the GENaustin Web site. She was featured in an article in the March 1, 2002 issue of the Austin Chronicle, and is a finalist for the 2002 SXSW Dewey Winburne Award for community service. We know she certainly deserves it, and we wish her the best of luck!
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SafeWalk 2002: Have Fun, Get Fit, and Help GENaustin |
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We have a great opportunity for you to help out GENaustin. It's the SafeWalk, a fundraising walk put on by SafePlace, a merger of the Center for Battered Women and the Austin Rape Crisis Center. SafePlace has invited GENaustin to gather teams together for the walk, and whatever money we raise goes directly to GENaustin. This is one of our bigger fundraisers, and we need your help.
The walk is Saturday, April 20th, and we're looking for volunteers to be team captains for the walk. As a team captain you would be encouraged to recruit nine other people, with each of you raising $100 to walk. You would be in charge of gathering your team and collecting the money before the race. GENaustin will supply you with all the necessary documents you need and offer guidance in your search for team members.
If you aren't able to be a team captain, you can still help out this great cause. You can either be a walker for GENaustin, and be responsible for raising $100 for yourself, or donate money to a walker. Please contact us at [email protected] or 414-0472 to get involved.
- Date: Saturday, April 20, 2002
- Start Time: Events start at 10:00am - Walk starts at 12:00pm (noon)
- Location: Walk starts from Waterloo Park in Austin
- Walk Length: 2.2 miles
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GENaustin in the News: New York Times and Good Morning America Feature GENaustin |
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GENaustin continues to receive excellent news coverage. We take our responsibility for informing the public very seriously and always look for opportunities to impact what's presented in the media.
Recently, GENaustin was one of the few organizations mentioned as a resource in an article in the New York Times Magazine. Published on February 24th, the article was entitled "Girls Just Want to Be Mean" and was about aggression among girls. Much of the magazine article focused on an East-coast program that worked by helping girls identify, label, and deconstruct the social hierarchy of their schools. It went on to detail some of the ways girls are hurting girls - in sometimes shockingly brutal ways --using new technology available to most teens, such as email and voice mail.
After the article appeared, GENaustin was contacted by local parents who felt that focusing on girl vs. conflict may have the effect of making it "cool," and that encouraging conversation about the ways girls hurt other girls might result in giving girls ideas. In response GENaustin developed a statement about our approach to girl-on-girl aggression as demonstrated by our presenters.
GENaustin's presentation, "Girl-to-Girl: Girl Friends, Girl Foes," (Thursday, April 4, 7 - 8:30 p.m., O'Henry Middle School) addresses the issue of girl-on-girl aggression and provides insight and successful strategies for dealing with ways girls love, hurt, and can heal each other.
The presenters of "Girl-to-Girl" work with a panel of high school girls to focus positive attention on girl friendships, remind girls what a good friend acts like and sounds like - and what the pain of being victimized feels like and sounds like - and offer some practical advice about how to work out a problem with a friend, or how to let that friend go.
The article also sparked the interest of Good Morning America who came to Austin on February 27th to interview GENaustin. They filmed the Bailey/Bowie clubGEN and interviewed middle school and high school girls and our Executive Director, Anita Mennucci. We don't have the exact date that is will air but keep your eyes open for GENaustin on this national television news program.
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GENaustin Office Has a New Home |
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GENaustin H.Q. has moved! As of April 1st, the GENaustin office is officially located at Fulmore Middle School, who was kind enough to offer us office space. We are thrilled to be on a middle school campus where we have the opportunity to interact with girls on a daily basis and become more attuned to their surroundings and daily pressures. Fulmore's donation of office space along with telephone, fax, Internet, and copy machine usage to GENaustin is considerable, saving us nearly 10% of our total annual budget!
Though our mailing address will remain the same, our new physical address is:
Fulmore Middle School
201 East Mary Street, Room 100
Austin, Texas 78704
Our phone and fax numbers have also changed:
Phone: 512-414-0472
Fax: 512-441-3129
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Easy Ways to Help GENaustin |
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When you make a purchase at the following places part of your purchase goes to help fund GENaustin.
One more way you can help is by purchasing one or more raffle tickets. The raffle is for two roundtrip tickets on Southwest Airlines, and the tickets are $5 each or $20 for 5. Call 414-0472 to find out how to get your raffle tickets.
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This site was last updated on 04/04/2005.
Copyright © GENaustin, Inc. 2001. All rights reserved.
GEN, GENaustin, and GENaustin logos used and displayed herein are registered and
unregistered trademarks of GENaustin, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks
and logos used herein are the property of their respective owners. Email us at
office@genaustin.org.
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