Girls Inc. of Santa Fe

In a room of the Hillside Center, a group of 5 and 6 year old girls put on space helmets, and prepare to launch. Their mission: to explore other planets and bring back observations of alien plants and animals. In preparation for this journey, their facilitators have placed drawings of extraterrestrial life throughout the room. The young explorers search for signs of life and sketch what they find before returning to their rocket for the voyage home. By pretending to be astronauts, the girls are not only exercising their imaginations, but they are also they are envisioning one possible future for themselves. They learned that dreams can become a reality. At the same time. a Larger group of 10 and 11 year old spend a week getting hands on experience with scientific methods as they take on the roles of forensic scientists conducting an investigation into a fictional murder. Their facilitators present them with the facts of the case. The girls use microscopes to examine simulated hair and blood samples. They try on the work of a scientist and learn about the importance of organization, record keeping, and attention to detaiL They have gone beyond imagining and entered the realm of tangible practice. They learned that yes, they can do It Two dozen teens and pre-teens prepare for a three-day camping trip in the Pecos Wilderness. This requires more than just assembling the necessary equipment. They spend weeks training physically for the demands of the eleven-mile hike they will take. They work through activities designed to improve their communication and decision making skills. Perhaps most importantly, they act as a team to support and encourage each other as they face challenging situations. One such undertaking involves a trip to the Santa Fe Mountain Center, where the girls climb re-purposed telephone poles to reach a wire strung high above the ground. A girl traverses the wire from each end, meeting in the middle where they must change places before continuing to the other end of the wire. Both girls wear harnesses attached to safety lines belayed by the rest of the girls in their group, offering encouragement from below. Thus the support they give, and learn to trust in. is both physical and emotional. They learned that they can trust themselves and one another. These are just a few example of the kinds of programs Girls Inc. of Santa Fe provides to girls. Girls Inc. seeks to inspire girls to take positive risks to encourage healthy choices and to foster a sense of independence so that girls grow up to be strong, smart, and bold (healthy, educated and independent) women. Our programming is intentional, holistic, and grounded in research-based curriculum. These activities often emphasize an initial exploratory phase in which girls use all of their senses to experience a phenomenon, before being prompted with information that might otherwise limit their observations. They learned that they are strong, smart , and bold.