GEN's Voice

Issue 44
April 2005 Newsletter

In This Issue:

oriGENal voice is busy busy busy! The oriGENal voice campaign, funded through the Texas Cancer Council, empowers central Texas girls to be tobacco free. And with National Kick Butts Day right around the corner on April 13, oriGENal voice members have been brushing up their skills in community advocacy, training, and public speaking�all with the goal of informing other girls about the dangers of tobacco use.

Advocacy Training

On March 25, a group of oriGENal voice middle and high schoolers visited City Hall to learn about communicating with their government officials and advocating in their community. The workshop took place in the brand new City Hall downtown and featured notable speakers Councilwoman Betty Dunkerley, attorney Nikelle Meade, Sandy Hentges, the vice president of public policy for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, and lobbyist and community leader Celia Israel.

Teen advisory board member Estelle Garza, a junior at Westlake High School, accompanied the group. �It was very informative,� Estelle said. �All the women were good at speech-making, and there were lots of good messages for young women who might be interested in going into government or politics.�

The panelists all shared their thoughts about effective�and ineffective�techniques to inform elected officials and community members about their issues.

�They talked about strength in numbers,� Estelle said. �If you have an idea and you tell someone, you can get anything accomplished if you have enough people behind your cause.�

The panelists also shared tips for getting an audience to listen to your message.

�If you can relate to the group you�re talking to, you�ll get better results,� Estelle said. �If you�re talking to a group of older people, you should present your message differently than if you�re talking to a group of kids.�

Estelle has personal experience with this challenge. �It�s harder to get kids to listen to you. I started participating in oriGENal voice when I was 16 and some of the kids were 14, so they didn�t think they had to listen to me. But I just kept doing it and didn�t let them walk all over me. I have lots of information,� Estelle said.

GENaustin board member Kellie Bailey hosted the event. As an attorney and former president of the Texas Democratic Women, Kellie knows a lot about getting people to listen.

�Each of our girls must be given the skills to achieve their goals,� Kellie said. �The oriGENal voice girls have been working on developing strong self-esteem and strong communication skills. This training introduced them to well-respected community leaders and to their thoughts on how best to communicate to elected officials about the girls� issues.�

At the end of the workshop, the girls witnessed a proclamation from the Mayor deeming March 25 GENaustin Empowerment Day. While the Mayor was unable to attend the event himself, the girls were duly impressed by the presentations.

�It got me more interested in going out there and making a difference,�
Estelle said. �People will listen if you tell them enough.�

American Cancer Society Collaboration

On April 1, the oriGENal voice staff will collaborate with the Fulmore Middle School Peer Assisted Learning club (PALS) to help elementary school students understand the dangers of tobacco use. The PALS�with help and training from oriGENal voice and the American Cancer Society�s DUCK Tobacco is Foul campaign�will teach their lessons on the dangers of tobacco-use to students at Travis Heights Elementary school.

National Kick Butts Day

clubGEN high school facilitators are in on the anti-tobacco message, too.
During the week of National Kick Butts Day, clubGEN facilitators will be creating and executing activities on living tobacco-free with their middle school peers. oriGENal voice is looking for speakers who embody health and wellness to speak at an event that day. Contact Christine Carlucci at [email protected] you are interested.

Tough Cookies Don�t Crumble Duathlon

April 10 is the day we�ve all been training for�the Tough Cookies Don�t Crumble Duathlon. This running-biking-running event benefits GENaustin and will feature oriGENal voice girls, staff, and volunteers working the crowds, educating the masses, and dispensing pledge cards and information about the dangers of tobacco. Registration is still open for this race, so grab your water bottle and click www.tcdcfitness.com for more information.

Junior League Hispanic Mother Daughter Empowerment Conference

On April 23, oriGENal voice will participate in a Soy Unica Soy Latina Rally hosted by the Junior League Hispanic Mother Daughter Empowerment Conference at St. Edward�s University. oriGENal voice members will dispense information to the hundreds of girls and mothers expected to attend.

Texas Roundup

To round out the month�s activities, oriGENal voice will host an information booth at the Capitol�s Texas Roundup on April 30. The Roundup is an outdoor festival that features hundreds of Austin community groups and agencies with a goal of promoting healthy lifestyles. If you can volunteer to staff a table for a two-hour time slot, contact Christine Carlucci at [email protected].

We are looking for several folks to serve as school coordinators for different middle school campuses, most of which are in the north Austin area. The coordinator helps the school decide which presentations they want, arranges with the speaker for any audio/visual needs they might have, and attends the presentations.

Generally, it�s a small time commitment: some prep work, the presentations themselves, and some follow-up work gathering and processing evaluations of the programs. Next year we need coverage at Burnet, Dobie, and Kealing Middle Schools. Each school usually has three presentations per year. The presentations are during the day and usually last 1.5 hours, including all the prep work. Do you have an extra hour and a half? If so, contact Laura Donnelly at GENaustin at 414-0472 or go to www.genaustin.org or fill out a volunteer application indicating your interest in Speaker Series. Thanks!

Thanks to everyone for the great work in 2004-2005. GENaustin staff members are in the process of summarizing evaluations and input from our events. The feedback has been great!

Here are this month�s Speaker Series events:

�The Roller Coaster Ride of Middle School Years: Coping with Stress and Success�
Wednesday, April 6th, 11:05 a.m.
Covington Middle School
*For girls and parents*

School, friends, hormones, dances, sports, parents, drugs, popularity, thinness. Yikes! How much pressure can young teens carry before it begins to affect their grades, their relationships, and their futures? This presentation will help parents and girls understand and manage the stresses in girls� lives.

�What is Your Relationship with Your Body?�
Wednesday, April 13th, 11:30 a.m. � 12:30 p.m.
Redeemer Lutheran
*For girls*

For many people, meeting society�s ideal body image has become more important than being healthy. Society�s top solutions appear to be �a diet� or surgery. But there are ways to change your body image without doing damage to your body! Carol York, LCSW, will discuss how learning to love your physical appearance can positively affect self-acceptance, self-esteem, and physical health. it

KUT Radio Austin

For their coverage of Eating Disorder Awareness Week, KUT-FM interviewed GENaustin�s Girl Advisory Board member and clubGEN facilitator Hannah Platt about her own struggles with bulimia and anorexia. Frank and courageous, Hannah talked candidly about spiraling from a strict self-imposed diet to the beginnings of starving herself. You can listen to the interview at:

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The piece aired in tandem with an interview with Ann Ducharme-Jones, who hosted the Elisa Project, a dinner held at St. Edwards University in March to commemorate a young woman who died from anorexia. The dinner, which was held in conjunction with hundreds of similar dinners in different cities around the world, featured a variety of speakers, including survivors, doctors, therapists, nutritionists, and people who are currently battling the disease who found the courage to speak out. More than 200 people attended the Austin event.

GENaustin staff and volunteers attended the event at the invitation of Beth Bellanti, a devoted GENaustin volunteer and contributor. �I feel passionate about transferring some survival skills on to our girls through volunteering with GENaustin,� Beth said.

Austin American Statesman

In addition to Hannah�s interview, GENaustin teen volunteer and McCallum High School sophomore Claire Dempster worked to increase awareness about the root causes of eating disorders by writing about the media�s influence on female body image in an op-ed piece in the Austin American Statesman on March 25:

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Also in the Statesman, GENaustin Speaker Series presenter Annabelle Arteaga was recognized as one of the 22 women selected to participate in the National Hispana Leadership Institute�s 2005 Fellowship Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. According to the NHLI, Arteaga was selected because of her community service record that includes experiences at GENaustin, Girls Scouts Lone Star Council and Mexic-Arte Museum. What an excellent role model!

Girlstown.com

A new girl-friendly, Austin-based publication, Girlstown.com, featured a profile on GENaustin. Staffer Nicole Basham and clubGEN veteran and high school facilitator Cecily Oropeza eloquently described some of GENaustin�s programs and goals. You can see the article here:

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Daily Texan

Covering oriGENal voice�s visit to the new City Hall building downtown for a workshop titled Public Policy 101 and meet and greet with the Mayor, the Daily Texan featured a story on some future lobbyists from the oriGENal voice girl advisory board from Dobie Middle School.

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GENaustin is pleased to announce the addition of two new staff members following the departure of our Director of Programs, Barb Steinberg. Barb has left GENaustin following the birth of her son, Jack. Interested in assisting GENaustin in its expansion measures, Barb has not left for good, but her day to day presence in the office and her role leading our programs will be sorely missed. Barb has worked as GENaustin�s Director of Programs for over two years. Her skills as a licensed social worker were invaluable to the growth and expansion of clubGEN and the agency at large.

Stepping in for Barb temporarily is Katherine Fitzgerald, a consultant hailing from New Orleans. Katherine graduated from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and has since worked as Project Coordinator at the City of Austin Health and Human Services Department and as Business Development Specialist at Friends and Company in New Orleans. Katherine has great professional aptitude in helping organizations achieve their objectives for growth and change.

Joining Katherine on the new employee roster is Veronica Barrio, a fantastic talent in web design, who will be joining GENaustin as oriGENal voice�s webmaster. Veronica comes to GENaustin with over ten years of experience in technical implementations and freelance design. After earning a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin, she worked extensively at National Instruments where she managed teams of programmers and web designers.

GENaustin will hold its third annual End of the Year Party on April 18 from 6-8 pm at LCRA headquarters on Lake Austin Blvd., where space was donated for this volunteer appreciation event. High school facilitators and community sponsors are invited to this dinner event as a thanks for their hard work and commitment throughout the year.

One such sponsor is Tina Jewell, a counselor at LBJ High School, who has been working with the high school facilitators at LBJ since January. Tina helps the older girls outline their topics and plan the activities for the clubGEN meetings with middle schoolers. While she occasionally offers ideas or advice, she mainly listens and keeps the planning meetings on track.

Because LBJ has both an academy and a neighborhood school, Tina made sure that the club had facilitators from both entities as a way to bring together girls who didn�t know each other. �clubGEN has helped them to venture out of their core groups and make friends. It is wonderful to watch them interact,� she said.

While the activities in clubGEN are designed for middle school students, the very act of planning and executing them enriches the high school facilitators. For example, the older girls found that listening is important to find out what the younger girls are dealing with � but also to set an example for the younger girls to follow.

�They found themselves frustrated with the middle school girls� not listening to them and found that if they did not listen themselves, they were not going to know the middle school girls� needs,� Tina explained. �They also learned that repetition is the key to the younger girls making a change.� Rather than scheduling one week to talk about bullying, for example, the facilitators found that the problem merited multiple sessions. After a couple of middle school girls got into a fight, �they understood that the process could take some time, and they needed to work on multiple topics each week,� Tina said.

Both groups get something out of their participation in clubGEN. �The high school girls have learned to work together,� listening to each other�s ideas, expanding on the good ones, and changing direction from ones that don�t work as well, Tina said. �The middle school girls are learning that they can have different opinions and they will be accepted.�

The girls are not the only ones to grow as a result of clubGEN�even Tina has benefited from her participation. �Getting to know these students has helped me to get to know the entire student body better,� she said, �because they tell their friends that I�m a good person to go to when you need someone to talk to.�

If you�d like to volunteer to be a clubGEN sponsor, contact Nicole Basham at [email protected]. Volunteers interesting in helping with party set up and clean up should contact Melissa Sumner at [email protected].

It�s finally here! The oriGENal voice CD will be in stores this month.
Look for it at Waterloo Records and through the GENaustin Web site, www.genaustin.org. For only $13.99, you can hear a great collection of songs by a mix of nationally known superstars and Austin�s favorite musicians. And all proceeds benefit GENaustin! Pick up your copy today (and remember, Mother�s Day is just around the corner)!

GENaustin's programs are made possible through the generous support of 3M, Alice Kleberg Reynolds Meyer Foundation, Applied Materials, the Austin Community Foundation, Austin Independent School District, Austin Wine Merchant, Austin Ventures, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Favrot Foundation, Girl Next Door, the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, the Silverton Foundation, Meredith Private Foundation, Safeway, Shoes for Austin, Texas Cancer Council, the Topfer Foundation, the Lower Colorado River Authority, the Webber Family Foundation, Wells Fargo and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.

Make an online donation to GENaustin through Network for Good by clicking on this Web link: guidestar

GENaustin has been selected to take part in Buffalo Exchange�s Tokens for Bags Program. The program allows customers to choose to receive a token instead of a bag when making their purchase and the token represents a cash donation to a particular charity. So the next time you�re shopping at Buffalo Exchange (2904 Guadalupe), be sure to forego the bag and help out GENaustin by placing your token in our box. Our box is in the middle!

Now you can support GENaustin and its important programs simply by shopping online. Just go to GENaustin, Get Involved, Shop and follow the links to more than 400 stores, including Barnes & Noble, Land's End, Ann Taylor, Linens-n-Things, Neiman Marcus, L.L. Bean, Dell, Amazon.com, JC Penney, Old Navy, Gap and many more!

Pei-San Brown, Proprietor of Pei-San, Inc., will be donating 5 percent of all jewelry sales (not including tax, shipping, and website/credit card transaction fees) generated by GENaustin supporters to GENaustin. Anyone interested in purchasing one of Pei-San�s lovely designs should enter �GENaustin� in the referral box (the box labeled "How did you hear about Pei-San, Inc.?"). To peruse Pei-San�s unique collection of necklaces, earrings and bracelets click: here.

Inspired by the book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, GENaustin, a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, was formed in 1996.

GENaustin is a non-profit organization based in Austin, TX, and was founded in 1996. GENaustin�s mission is to foster healthy self-esteem in girls by engaging them to explore and define their personal values and to build skills that empower them with confidence and courage to make wise choices. Our vision is that we become a premiere source/model organization in Austin and beyond for creative approaches that build girls' critical thinking, self-esteem and confidence.

For more information, please visit our Web site at www.genaustin.org. Our mailing address is P.O. Box 3122, Austin TX, 78764. You may call us at (512) 414-0472 or email us at [email protected].

To receive our newsletter via email each month, send an email to newsletter@genaustin.org. Please include your full name and the email address where you like the newsletter to be sent.

Copyright © GENaustin, Inc. 2001-2005. 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.