COMMERCE CITY — The girls sit in a wriggly circle, dressed in variations on skinny jeans and hoodies and sneakers, a few wearing a touch of lace and their first makeup, one wearing a head scarf. There are budding starlets, tomboys, shy kids, girls who bounce in their chairs.
And they talk, each in turn, telling who they are on this dark November evening at Kearney Middle School:
“I’m at Level 11 ’cause I’m hyper.”
“I put pictures of computers in my ‘me’ brochure because I like techno.”
“I have this non-twinkly friend, who maybe she’s not going to be my friend anymore because she’s mean to me.”
This is Smart-Girl, an activity program for middle-school girls that puts a laserlike focus on the years when girls’ anxieties go through the roof — years when they can feel like they’re under daily assault from without and within.
But at Smart-Girl, “They’re in a safe space where they know they’re going to be listened to,” said the group’s executive director Karen Silverman.
Smart-Girl was created in 2000 by four female US West executives who knew the geography of the glass ceiling and wanted their own kids to grow up without limits. They drew on their own experiences and lots of psychological and counseling research.
Smart-Girl is one of several organizations that have received funding through Denver Post Charities Season to Share.
The program trains “near peers” — high school or early college-age women — as guides who lead the groups through activities aimed at helping girls handle conflict, resist peer pressure and find confidence. The guides, often former Smart-Girl participants, are trained by counseling professionals and professors at a three-day retreat on a college campus. Training is the program’s biggest expense.
During the last year, the organization ran Smart-Girl groups in 40 locations and served 1,137 girls. In addition, a Smart-Guys pilot program at two middle schools — Scott Carpenter Middle School in Denver and Baker Central in Fort Morgan — launched and served 75 boys. More than 6,000 kids have participated to date in the weekly meetings, some hosted at schools, some at Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver.
“The report from girls was that it was their place, where they could let down and take off their masks and talk more honestly,” said Gary Frantz, who leads Smart-Girl groups and one of the pilot Smart-Guys groups at Scott Carpenter Middle School in Denver. “There is so much angst around relating to each other and being accepted.”
The activities are deceptively simple. They begin with each student telling where they are on a scale of 1 to 10, with some girls ignoring that numerical outer limit. Then they might role-play how to defuse a bullying situation or resist peer pressure. One week in November, participants statewide were invited to a screening of “Miss Representation,” a documentary on media images of women.
At Kearney Middle School that night, the tallest of the girls corralled one of the younger ones to get her to tie a shoe so that she didn’t trip during a raucous team-building game. The evening ended with the girls stretched out on the floor making friendship bracelets.
“It’s all about helping girls help one another, about noticing when one of them needs support,” Silverman said. “And sometimes it’s just about having laid-back girl time.”
Susan Clotfelter: 303-954-1078, sclotfelter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/susandigsin
Smart-Girl
Address: 6825 E. Tennessee Ave., Suite 637, Denver, CO 80224
In operation since: 1999
Number served last year: 1,137
Staff: 3
Yearly budget: $272,282
Percentage of funds given directly to clients and services: 80 percent
