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Foxy empowers Northern girls Peer leader Shayna Button says retreat was 'best experience I've had ... ever'
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, August 7, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The 20 young girls who went to the Foxy Peer Leader Retreat in July recently returned from Blachford Lake Lodge feeling empowered and confident, according to project co-ordinator Nancy MacNeill.
"It was a really amazing week and I feel like all of the girls had awesome experiences, but different experiences," said MacNeill. "I think they all left with the same knowledge but having learned something that was special for them."
The 10-day retreat included arts-centered workshops that taught the girls how to express themselves and be comfortable and confident in their knowledge of sexual health.
"A lot of the girls knew what condoms were, they knew that they prevented (sexually-transmitted infections) but they didn't know how to assert themselves and make sure their partner wore won," said MacNeill.
Shayna Button, 17, was one of the peer leaders at the retreat, who found she learned more through Foxy than in high school.
"It gave me a lot more information about sexual health and I learned a lot more about myself rather than if I were going to take a sex ed class at school," she said. "Rather than looking at the STIs and the facts, I learned more about the emotional side of things."
Button said the retreat has left her feeling much more confident in herself.
"I am generally a happy person but after this retreat I feel so much more happy and confident and excited," she said. "I feel I can be myself around more people where before I was sort of hidden in my own little shell."
The project started more than a year ago when Foxy project lead Candice Lys, a PhD student from Dalhousie University who grew up in Fort Smith, decided she wanted to focus on sexual health education in teen girls. Lys said when she was in school she didn't receive sexual education.
The technique at the retreat was to teach the girls more about sexual health through arts-centered activities and through open discussions.
The girls also left the retreat with plans to start campaigns aimed at fixing issues they'd identified in their respective communities, from a lack of sexual education, to confidence workshops, to recycling. Lys and MacNeill will be supporting the girls in their individual projects throughout the next six months.
"We wanted the girls to know they can create a legacy in their own communities that will last forever," said MacNeill.
Even though the focus of the retreat was on sexual health, MacNeill said other issues came up as well.
"We saw the girls identify things like cyber-bullying, slut-shaming, body issues, lots of self-confidence issues as well," she said. "We saw lots of interesting ways the girls addressed the issues, mostly involving increasing self-respect and learning how to respect others."
For the future, Lys and MacNeill are planning to create a program agenda to facilitate future workshops throughout the NWT. The agenda will include visits to Northern schools and hopefully more retreats for peer leaders, Lys said.
MacNeill said the most exciting part of Foxy's future would come from the girls themselves.
"The next little while, the things you hear from Foxy will come from the peer leaders, girls who are back in their communities. We're expecting to see a lot of grassroots projects take off from this, and the girls are owning up to those expectations," said MacNeill.
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