There’s nothing like a 6:30 am wake-up to kick-start your day! Off to the train station we went, probably still half asleep, for the long train ride home. What a productive weekend though! Marketing, budgets, website editing, blogging, fundraising, hiring, logistics finalizations… looking at our to-do list, we wonder how are ever going to get it all done while at university. We’re motivated though. More than that, we are as excited as ever to grow the outreach of our passion, and knowing this, no doubt crosses our minds that we’re not going to work hard to get there. All of our love and thanks to the one and only Aunt Z for the amazing weekend filled with hard work, hearty laughs, and special memories, and also for her continuous support and advice. Until we meet again, à bientôt, Montréal!

This afternoon we were lucky enough to meet with one of the Founders of Girls Action Foundation, Tatiana Fraser, at the lovely cafe, “Café, Moi, et Toi”. I think it’s safe to say that talking with her was one of the weirdest but most interesting experiences we’ve had. Why you ask? Because while listening to Tatiana share her story about how Girls Action Foundation grew as an organization, it dawned on us how much we have in common. It definitely opened our eyes to the possibilities ahead of us.

The Girls Action Foundation started out with Tatiana and two of her friends in her Women’s Studies program at the University of Ottawa running “POWER Camp”, a summer day camp for girls empowerment. Since 1995, they have grown to the Girls Action Foundation, a national charitable organization leading and seeding girls’ programs across Canada. With a network of over 300 partnering organizations and projects, Girls Action reaches over 60,000 girls and young women. Tatiana lent us her advice on funding, programming, and goals. We are looking forward to CSP becoming a member of Girls Action! Check out their website to get involved and for tons of great resources from girls’ physical and emotional health to the effects of media on girls.

Three hours, that’s all it took for the fantastic Joe Neuhaus to show us the ropes on how to construct, design, and edit our website! Growing up in the generation of smart phones and iPads, we like to think we are fairly technologically-savvy. However, working a website, we learned, can be much more complex than editing a Facebook page or sending a text message. Luckily for us, Joe was able to explain how to use all of the editing and design tools simply. With the motivation of cinnamon buns (courtesy of Lisa!), Aunt Z’s famous chai tea lattes, Joe’s determination, our excitement, and the encouragement of Oreo and Marshmallow (the cats), we learned about all of the different settings and tools! There’s still lots to upload and more pages to create, but we’ve got the basics and the knowledge to do the rest. So tell us – what do you think?!

After a busy day of program planning and budgets, it was time to use our brains in another way: for reflection. Aunt Z had scheduled in a “Leadership Reflection Activity” for the night, and the three of us were interested to see what she had in store.

We were each given 10 sticky notes – 5 for each of the other two girls. The green sticky notes were for writing down the best personal attributes of the team member and the pink sticky notes were for what valuable skills that she brought to the team. The funny thing is, although we run tons of teamwork and leadership workshops for our campers, these activities are not something we often take the time to do between ourselves. Even though we’ve known each other forever and are great at working together, it was still hard trying to pinpoint these specific attributes and skills. We split up to concentrate and once we were finished, came back to post the stickies on each other’s posters. We were surprised by how striking attributes and skills for each person were rightly highlighted and how in some instances, the attributes and skills were nailed by more than one person!

Lastly, we were each given one blue sticky note. This was for us to each write down one weakness that we wanted to work on and improve. Pondering our personal weaknesses and sharing them was so valuable because we now know our own as well as each others’ goals for change, and it will be easier now to maximize our individual strengths!

Thanks Aunt Zard for putting the thought into this activity, allowing us to take time to reflect on our personal strengths and weaknesses for the best possible teamwork 🙂

A budget can be a tricky thing to configure, especially when it’s three girls studying sciences and arts trying to do it. While Aunt Z hit the tennis court for her weekly lesson, the three of us talked in dollars, trying to estimate the expenses and revenues of the new projects we are taking on this summer, over Chez Cora’s heavenly crepes, eggs, and fresh fruit! In addition, we prepared for the big meeting we had in the afternoon with a few of our Aunt’s contacts in the business and entrepreneurship fields.

Lisa Chandler, Coach for Business Owners and Professionals at Chandler Coaches and Anita Nowak, Integrating Director at The Social Economy Initiative at McGill University took our meeting in a direction we hadn’t anticipated. After giving them an overview of how our organization has evolved over the past four years and explaining our plans for the future, they asked some big questions I don’t think we’d thought of before: What would you like the next five years to look like? What are your wildest dreams about where this movement of yours could go? Overwhelmed and imaginations spinning, we didn’t have immediate answers to these questions, but they definitely gave us lots to think about. Lisa and Anita also helped us work through some of the big questions we had been struggling with – Should we attempt a boys camp session? How do we get the word out about Residential Camp? Many thanks to these incredible women for their time and advice, it was very much appreciated!

It was also great to have 12 year old CSP alumna, Julia N. at the table – she helped us keep the discussion camper-focused and was wonderful at attending to the needs of Lisa’s adorable one-year old daughter (whose presence inspired us for the future)!

Montréal, notre vieux ami! It really has been too long since we were here, living hilarious adventure after adventure in our younger teenage years. After a long afternoon of travelling, we received the warmest of welcomes from our Aunt Zard and her two cats, Oreo and Marshmallow! After brainstorming a to-do list and deciding on our goals for the weekend, it is time for an early night. What a day we have ahead of us tomorrow!

Considering this summer will be Camp Stella Puella’s FIFTH year anniversary, we figured it was about time to have our First Annual CSP Retreat. And what better place to do it than where it all started, in Montreal with our dear mentor, Aunt Zard!

So here we have it, our team for the weekend in addition to a few special guests and advisors that we can’t wait to meet with!