Dianne Vickery has been working for Girls Inc. of Delaware and its predecessors for nearly 40 years. She remembers the days when girls would fill the organization’s Dennison Branch in Wilmington’s Browntown neighborhood, eager for more instruction in the 3 R’s, etiquette lessons and training in homemaking skills.
The Dennison Branch is still open, albeit with less focus on “readin’, ’ritin’ and ’rithmetic,” and not nearly as crowded as in years past. And Vickery, the program director for Girls Inc., is spending more time on the road.
For a week in January, she taught in the special intersession program at Maple Lane Elementary School in Claymont. She does weekly programs during the school day at Townsend Elementary, provides an after-school enrichment program at Brandywine Springs Elementary and oversees a weekly after-school gymnastics program at Downes Elementary in Newark.
Next year, she is likely to be spending even more time in schools.
“We need to go where the girls are,” explained Brenda Algar, the Girls Inc. executive director. “We’re taking what we’ve been doing forever, and we’re taking it into the schools.”
Girls Inc. began as the Girls Club more than 60 years ago, and has been a fixture in Browntown almost ever since. It has served more than 50,000 girls between the ages of 6 and 18, usually between 1,500 and 2,000 a year. While its headquarters remains a focal point of the community, Algar has been striving to put more emphasis on the “of Delaware” portion of the organization’s name ever since she arrived here from Maine in December 2008.
“Historically, we haven’t done much in Kent County, especially the lower portion, and in Sussex,” Algar said. But that is about to change.
In February, Girls Inc. will bring “My Girlfirend Zelda,” a four-week self-esteem program for girls ages 6-10 to South Dover Elementary School.
By early fall, and perhaps as soon as this summer, Girls Inc. will roll out its Latina Initiative, a statewide program whose early emphasis will be on serving the needs of Hispanic girls in Sussex County. Girls Inc. has received a grant from the Arsht-Cannon Foundation, which primarily supports programs that benefit immigrant families, to plan the program’s implementation and hopes to receive a second grant when operations begin, Algar said.
“We’re looking to create a continuum of services and to partner with other agencies in Sussex County,” she said.
One confirmed partner is the Sussex Child Health Promotion Coalition, an independent coalition of about 170 organizations founded in collaboration with Nemours Health and Prevention Services.
Girls Inc. will be “a very important addition” to providers of youth services in Sussex County, said Peggy Geisler, the coalition’s director. “In Sussex, we have a lot of sports-related organizations, but a majority of organizations focus on activities for males rather than females,” she said. “There are not a lot of activities for at-risk girls.”
The Latina Initiative, Algar said, features a collection of programs developed by the Girls Inc. national organization that have been made “culturally sensitive” and translated into Spanish. “We’re going to embrace that curriculum and add some of our own touches,” she said.
After one or more locations are chosen to offer the programs — the Georgetown and Seaford areas are under consideration — new staff will be hired in Sussex to provide the instruction, she said.
In both Kent and Sussex, the new Girls Inc. model will rely on building partnerships with schools and other nonprofits and sharing facilities with these organizations, Algar said.
Going “where the girls are,” Algar said, might mean “one night a week you’ll be in a church basement, one night you might be at Dover Air Force Base, one night you’ll be at a community center.”
“You don’t need to build a building,” Geisler said.
As part of the national Girls Inc. network, the Delaware organization has access to educational programming that has been developed at the Girls Inc. research center in Indianapolis. Girls learn differently than boys and the programming is both age-appropriate and designed to match their learning styles, Algar said.
Girls Inc. goes into schools to help at-risk girls.
Girls Inc.'s “Media and Me” program at Townsend Elementary is helping raise awareness of media stereotypes.
[flashvideo file=http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/girls-inc.flv image="http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/girls-inc.jpg" /]
For example, at Townsend Elementary School, Vickery is currently offering a weekly program called “Media and Me” to a group of second and third graders who signed up for the class as one of their “talent development” options, Townsend teacher Maureen Emmett said. Unlike most Girls Inc. offerings, there is a handful of boys taking the class, but that’s because the school doesn’t have any boys-only programs in that time period.
In the class, Vickery, with Emmett as her partner, serves up a mix of discussions, YouTube videos and art projects to show the girls the differences between real and make-believe, with a focus on how advertising, television, film and the print media create stereotypes of beauty and subtly (sometimes not so subtly) try to persuade girls to adopt such glamorous looks as their own.
“Mrs. Vickery opens children’s minds to the world of stereotyping,” Emmett said.
At Maple Lane Elementary, Vickery recently offered a program called Operation SMART, which stands for Science, Math and Relevant Technology, during the school’s “intersession,” a four-day break in the school’s extended year calendar when students voluntarily attend to participate in enrichment activities.
“Before STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education became a buzzword, Girls Inc. had been teaching girls the importance of science and math,” Algar said.
The program, which focused on building bridges, gave the girls “a background they might not receive in the regular curriculum,” and opened to them the possibility of a career in engineering, said Yulanda Murray, principal at Maple Lane.
Murray is impressed with the diversity of enrichment programs available through Girls Inc. During an earlier intersession, she said, Vickery presented a series of lessons on Native American history.
“Her programs always hit the different modalities — visual, historic, something the children can produce or make.” She said. “It always makes for memorable moments for students and creates a level of interest.”
While Girls Inc. intends to extend its reach by going “where the girls are,” for now it will continue to offer afternoon and evening programs at the Dennison Branch and after-school programs in rented space at the Claymont Community Center, Algar said.
“We’re working with a very vulnerable group of girls, helping them meet their potential, helping them see their possibilities, showing them that life is about choices,” Algar said. “Our mission is to help girls become strong, smart and bold.