Session 3, 2013 was an absolute blast! The campers enjoyed swimming, doing zumba, picking fresh, organic vegetables at Shared Harvest Community Farm, and putting on their Real Girls Runway fundraiser!

The Real Girls Runway rose awareness about our topic of the week: gender equality. To tackle this topic, the campers broke into four crews, focusing on gender equality in media, sports, the workplace, or leadership. Some quick stats the girls shared:

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN THE MEDIA:

– The average North American girl will see 80,000 ads on TV before she has started kindergarten. While boys in ads are almost always shown building, inventing, leading, or playing sports, girls in ads are almost always on the sidelines, laughing or talking.
– Nearly half of Canadian girls between the ages of 10 and 17 have avoided social activities because they feel badly about the way they look. Only 2% of women think they’re beautiful.

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN SPORTS:

– Although approximately 40% of sport and physical activity participants today are women, only 6 to 8% of total media sports coverage is devoted to their athletics.

– In a study of school books, boys were represented in physical activities 65% of the time, while girls were represented 35% of the time. Boys dominated throwing and catching activities, while girls were mainly seen in traditionally “feminine” sports like dance.

– This year alone, 50,405 Canadian girls will quit swimming because they feel bad in a bathing suit

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN THE WORKPLACE:

– Women working full-time jobs only earn an average of 71 cents for every $1 that men make. On top of this, women on average spend much more time doing work they don’t get paid for. This can include hours of childcare, cooking, driving, cleaning, laundry, etc. each day.

– Poverty in Canada doesn’t effect all women equally. Some groups of women are much more likely to be poor than others – Aboriginal women 36%, non-white women 35%, women with disabilities 26%, single parent mothers 14%, single senior women 14%.

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN LEADERSHIP:

– In Canada, 52% of the population is female but only 22% of Members of Parliament are women. On a broader scale, of all the people in parliament in the world, 13% are women.

– Although it is becoming more common to hear of women taking on roles of leadership in businesses, only 13% of directors at Canada’s top 500 private and public companies are women.

Despite the fact that these issues are complicated, the campers learned why these issues are apart of our society and what they can do to try to change them! They also learned that support and leadership of men in the fight for gender equality is important :)And as a side note… the girls raised over $300 in support of their charity of choice, Because I am a Girl Canada

Lastly, this week, we also had a group of LITs – Leaders in Training! In addition to taking on different leadership roles at camp, the LITs also spent an afternoon volunteering with senior citizens at Grandview Lodge and enjoyed yoga, a campfire, and special self-esteem and leadership training on the LIT Overnight.

What a week!  And what an amazing group of campers – enthusiastic and diverse in their passions!  We were so excited to welcome so many returning campers back as well as meet some amazing new star girls! This session was a blast, complete with a dance-off, a day at Shared Harvest farm, and some songwriting!  Lastly, the girls showed off their wicked dance moves and comedic acts at our talent show/bake sale fundraiser.

Thanks everyone for a fantastic week!

Special Guest Theresa Randles

Fundraising for the Stephen Lewis Foundation

What a way to start the summer! We couldn’t have asked for a more amazing week to kick off Stella Puella’s 5th year!

The campers chose child rights as the theme of the week, so they learned about what rights are and some situations where those rights are taken away from some children. The girls’ eyes were opened to the unfair realities of thousands of kids around the world when they learned about child labour and child soldiers.

Highlights of the week included our musical guest Carolyn McKenna and special guest Theresa Randles from Grandmothers of Steel. The campers organized a stellar bake sale at Flyers Cafe, where they sold fair trade baked goods with the proceeds going towards Free the Children’s alternative income projects.

Possibly the most exciting event of the session was a surprise guest speaker at the end of the week. Michel Chikwanine, a former child soldier from the DRC, shared his heart-breaking yet inspiring story with the girls. What an incredible experience that was for our campers to hear first-hand how the rights of children around the world are taken away!

A big thanks to our campers this week for making it such a successful start to the summer! We miss you already!

Love, Yasmin, Mina & Julia

We are excited to announce our first ever video contest! Post a video about why you love Camp Stella Puella or why you are excited to join us for Summer 2012 to our Facebook page or send it to us via email! The most creative video will get 10% off one session of Dunnville Day Camp!

We love Earth Hour and can’t wait for this year’s to start in just a few hours! This hour of no electricity use unites people around the globe to protect our planet. The energy saved in thousands of people flipping off the switch for just the hour is significant. However, that isn’t the only benefit to the hour of darkness. It also gives us time to reflect on the importance of caring for our planet in fighting climate change and working towards a sustainable future. Last year, 135 countries participated in Earth Hour, totalling the engagement of over 1.8 billion people across the globe! For more information, check out www.earthhour.org and Happy Earth Hour 2012!

A shout-out to our campers from Free the Children Co-founder, Craig Kielburger! He gave an amazingly inspirational talk this evening at the University of Guelph about the impact that youth can have when they take positive actions to better themselves, their communities, and the global community. We love Free the Children’s Adopt a Village development model. Youth is not wasted on the young, not for this passionate generation!

We took the pledge to end our use of the r-word, you should too! Respectful and inclusive language is essential to the movement for the dignity of people with disabilities. However, much of society does not recognize the hurtful and dehumanizing effects of the word “retard(ed)”.
Take the pledge and spread the word to end the word!

Pledging to end our use of the r-word

Today marks Anti-Bullying Day also known as “Pink Shirt Day”, which started as a protest against a bullying incident when a boy wore a pink shirt to his high school. This was just one form of bullying.  Whether it be feeling left-out, unequal, unaccepted, unhappy or afraid to be yourself, we have all experienced bullying and have felt its negative impacts.

We need to remember that it’s a tough place out there where society has created these tightly bounded categories and if we don’t fit in them, we feel that we don’t belong and are vulnerable to being put down by others. Together, we can break down these boundaries and accept and appreciate people no matter their appearance, beliefs, gender, race or background. Let’s change this way of society, and stop bullying within and around us.  Check out some amazing resources on digital citizenship and anti-bullying strategies for kids, teens, parents and educators at Define The Line.

We love Pink Shirt Day!

Congratulations to our cousin and little sister, Laura Falco, on her first recording – a cover of Jessie J’s “Price Tag”! And what a positive message the song expresses. We’re so proud of you, rock on beautiful! Click here to listen to her on YouTube!

A shout out to the girls of CSP from Michele Landsberg!! She was a prominent journalist and leader in the Women’s Rights Revolution and is an incredible speaker. She gave an inspirational talk on women’s oppression in the developed world and the HIV/AIDS pandemic at McMaster University as a fundraiser for the Grandmothers of Steel chapter of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. She signed our copy of her new book, “Writing the Revolution” – this will definitely be added to our library!