Divided into three components: Healing, Resilience Tools, and Political Action/Education, the GE curriculum was built on the notion that young women must first be able to acknowledge and heal from the oppressions they face in order to reach goals of addressing and taking empowered action against them.

Training participants learn to apply this three-pronged approach, to everyday issues affecting young women’s lives, such as exploring intersections of race, class and gender, or examining sexual health and violence.

“Creating programs that listen and make a space where (girls) can talk about their experiences is the first step to making them powerful in their lives,” says Ije Ude, developer and facilitator of the GE training.

Ude, longtime organizer and trainer, recalls being aware of gender violence in her community. “Since I was very young, men and young women shared with me their experiences of sexual, emotional and physical abuse as children, in which trauma amongst them was common.” Ude decided to turn those experiences into positive energy to inspire her work by organizing alternative responses to gender violence in her community.

“Knowing that ‘the private is political’ it is important that we continue to see how our personal experiences of violence are connected to a larger system of inequalities.” Ude continued, "[In GE, girls are] learning about power, including their own power and how others use power over them, because power can be the tool in which we make a difference.”

In the process, difficult issues may arise when making spaces for girls to talk about their life experience. That is why the first two course components are devoted to Healing and Building Resilience. Giving them the lasting tools for self-healing and self-care helps to assure that their experiences of self-exploration do not restrain the transformation process.

It is through this transformation that girls learn to bring their skills to their community in the final section, Political Action/Education. In turn, the curriculum is used to prepare young women– as individuals and as a collective– to address systematic abuses such as teen dating violence or peer pressure.

Pavithra Vasudevan, Girls Empowerment Facilitator with the Institute for Labor & Community, said the training gave great insight to her work. “CONNECT's Girls Empowerment training has given me a chance to really think about my role as a facilitator…in supporting the girls in their own empowerment and growth. The training connects solid political education about oppression and social change with tools for healing and action.”

Girl's Empowerment is a part of the CONNECT Training Institute (CTI).
Register online for CTI, or view the current CTI Training Schedule.