March Newsletter 2010

Dear Friends,

Spring has sprung! The longer days and colorful blooms are inspiring us to share our own stories of new growth: GLI is expanding to Boulder CO, and New York City! To kick it off we are running our first Spring Break Day Camp in New York at the Young Women’s Leadership School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Check out the photos on Facebook.

Read below to learn about our new programs and get the latest on our original program—the GLI Summer Camp at Miss Halls School. We’re also sharing with you our latest research on resilience from Dr. Ken Ginsburg. And you’ll want to meet Kimberly, our Club Real Girl high school volunteer.

We hope to see you soon!

All our best,
Simone Marean & Julia Loonin

Summer Camp

We are so excited to celebrate being a girl with the over 100 girls from 20 states and four countries who are registered to join us this summer. The news is out – Rachel Simmons is coming to camp! If you want to learn relationship skills from the national expert on girls then don’t wait. Most grade levels have only a few spots left.

We created a new third session this summer just for girls going into grades 10 – 12 next fall.  Rachel is developing a new curriculum to meet the unique needs of these young women looking to live their lives as leaders, and looks forward to hanging out with them at camp.

Nervous about sending your girl away for the first time? GLI for rising 6th graders is designed to be an ideal first camp away that will set girls up for a lifetime of healthy risks and independence. Email us to talk to a parent whose daughter participated last year. Some of our most successful 6th grade campers have flown cross-country to be here, attending sleep-a-way camp for the first time with GLI!

New Regions

After months of planning, recruiting and imagining, our new regional programs are becoming a reality.  We’ve been traveling to Boulder on and off for the past year for in-school workshops, talks and parent-daughter weekends. The incredible hunger for quality programs to give girls, their teachers and parents the skills for emotional intelligence and healthy relationships inspired us to hire two local teachers and a community marketing specialist to bring GLI to the Boulder and Denver regions.  With our company’s roots in New York and our love for the Young Women’s Leadership Network we also felt compelled to find a way to serve the girls of the Big Apple. Stay tuned to see these new programs on our website soon.

SF Bay Area Special Update

If you live in the Bay Area then you need to take advantage of our three great events this spring:

  • Day Camp – April 12 – 16 at Covington School in Los Altos – Five spots left! GLI Spring Break Day Camp is five days of great friends, new skills, crazy games and laughing till your stomach hurts.  After 2009 Day Camp Sonnet said, “It was the best camp experience I ever had.” Her mom Rachel added, “You won’t regret this investment into your girl’s relationship resources.” Learn more and register now.
  • Mother/Daughter Weekend – May 14 – 16. For two years parents have been asking us for something for their older girls. Here it is! This is a transformational weekend for girls in grades 6 – 8 on the best practices in communication, emotional intelligence and healthy conflict. You’ll learn powerful new skills, learn about each other and laugh wicked hard.  Check out the details and sign up. Limited enrollment.
  • Mom’s Night Out, a GLI Fundraiser – Wednesday April 21, from 7:00 – 10:00 at Maltby’s in Los Altos. Grab a friend or two and come join us for an evening of fun, food and drink! GLI staff and board members will be on hand to serve you beverages of your choice with a tip jar where you can demonstrate your love for GLI. Proceeds will help with the development of our Silicon Valley programs for girls in grades K – 5, local scholarship and bilingual programs.

Girl Find: Dr. Ken Ginsburg

We loved hearing from Dr. Ginsburg this week on raising resilient kids. His research doesn’t focus on girls, but it 100% applicable to the girl world. We were relieved to learn that resilience is about 20% temperament and 80% support and circumstances. For help on how to connect to your teen and reduce her stress (and your stress), we recommend his book, Building Resilience in Children and Teens. If you have a young driver in the house check out his strategies for parenting a safer driver.

Meet Kimberly Fletcher

GLI lucked out big time this winter when Los Altos 11th grader Kimberly Fletcher wrote us an eye catching email that demanded we sit up and take notice of this amazing young woman.  In January she started volunteering weekly at our after school program. We are just starting to get to know Kimberly, so we thought you might like to get to know her too:

GLI: What drew you to contact GLI?
KF: I heard Rachel speak at an NCL event, and I thought she was a genius! I really identified with everything she said. There are parts of middle school I would never want to re-live, and after hearing Rachel talk, not only did I realize that I wasn’t the only one who felt like that, but I realized it didn’t have to be like that. I was inspired to get involved with GLI because I wanted to help “spread the word,” and help middle school girls learn to support each other, and not bring each other down.

GLI: How long did you spend writing the amazing email that you sent us?
KF: A  l o n g  time! Over a month…. I kept editing it because I wanted to make sure I portrayed my genuine interest in GLI. I didn’t know how many emails you and Julia received and I wanted to make sure mine left a good impression, because the opportunity to participate in GLI was really important to me.

GLI: What is you favorite part about being a part of Club Real Girl?
KF: I love getting to goof around with the girls. I never get to play fun games like Boppity Bop Bop Bop (my favorite!) in high school.

GLI: What do you give up in order to be there every week for the girls?
KF: Homework? I can’t really think of anything specific that I give up besides maybe some extra free time. I have tons of fun at Club Real Girl, so whatever it is-it’s worth it!

GLI: What helped you gain the confidence to be a great silly, loud, smart and insightful role model?
KF: I guess it’s mostly just who I am-I’ve never really been too afraid to stand out.  In sixth grade, when all of my friends were Princesses for Halloween, I was a bottle of mustard. Depending on my mood, I can be reserved and laid back, or silly and goofy but from experience I’ve learned that it’s much more fun to be silly and goofy. It’s always hard for me to put myself out there the first time, but I generally warm up to people quickly and Club Real Girl felt like a very safe environment.

GLI: Here at GLI we have a saying, “FOOD GOOD!” What is your favorite food?
KF: Anything my mom bakes! She makes the best chocolate chip cookies under the sun…. But I have a Peet’s Coffee and Jamba Juice fetish also.

We have a feeling that Kimberly is just getting started at GLI. We can’t wait to know her better and hopefully play some major Slip’N Slide with her this summer in the Berkshires.

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