Our awesome project is a series of topics to empower girls in the form of an artful zine publication. A zine is a mini magazine that is creative and informational. The zine features original art projects from participant in our girls program.
FOUS Youth Development Services provides school-based programming for girls, grades sixth through eighth. The topics for the girls program vary year to year. New schools who get the program for first time, there are seven standard topics. This includes self-image, self-esteem, self-confidence, courage, perseverance, empower and vision. In addition to topic specific sessions, we create youth-led projects. Two of the projects really resonated with students. Hence, the birth of our zine project.
The first project is the I Am a Unique Human Being art project. This project consists of the gathering of magazine images …body types, fashion, styles etc. Girls are to find the perfect lips, eyes, hair along with fashion etc. They then glue these images together to create the perfect girl. Naturally, they are surprised to find the portrait is not what they anticipated. It’s very abstract. Our message to the girls…having the perfect body etc. is not the answer, but seeing their beauty. The art project speaks volumes. It continues to create opportunities to have real discussions with girls regarding mixed messages about body image, ethnic stereotypes and so forth. The second project the girls enjoy is creating a Zine. There have been many topics explored using zines including health, relationships among others. A benefit of the project is students find their voice on issues that matter to them.
Since we’ve gotten great results from the two projects, we combined them. Every year we have up to four new groups of girls exposed to the program. We saw the opportunity to recreate the enormous impact from these two projects. As a result, creation of seven zines is now a standard curriculum for the girls club. The response have been very good