All-girl youth support group nurtures hopes and dreams
Laura McCardle
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Following cuts to single sex youth work services, the social enterprise Knowsley Youth Mutual set up a group to help local young women come together to share troubles and support each other to develop aspirations.
Provider: Knowsley Youth Mutual
Name: Big Love Little Sista
With their hands on their hearts and their heads held high, a group of young women pledge their allegiance to the sisterhood of Knowsley Youth Mutual (KYM).
It marks the end of a wellbeing programme, run by the social enterprise over the summer, based on a simple, yet often overlooked, concept - girl power.
The Big Love Little Sista programme saw 100 11to 19-year-olds from a variety of different backgrounds, including looked-after children and those receiving support under the Troubled Families initiative, come together to focus on their feelings and support each other to develop confidence and aspiration.
The initiative, which KYM now plans to deliver annually, builds on the Big Love Sista programme, which was founded by Clare Campbell.
She launched the programme in Liverpool in 2012 after experiencing a breakdown following a difficult relationship that involved domestic violence. Rather than turning to medication, Campbell used art as a way of helping her to heal.
Word spread and, before she knew it, she had 40 women in her house, supporting each other while they created colourful portraits of themselves.
Their artwork was displayed in Tate Liverpool for two weeks and, as a result of the exhibition, Campbell was invited to Knowsley Council to deliver a formal programme with 100 women, including KYM chief executive Sandra Richardson.
"All of the women were saying 'we wish we'd had this as young women' or that they wished their daughter had something like this," says Campbell.
"Sandra said we must do a version for younger women, and local public health services got behind it [to fund it]."
Richardson decided to kick things off with a six-week pilot, held during the summer, which focused on supporting the girls to connect with each other and enabling them to talk about their lives.
"What we really wanted to do was create a safe space for younger women, because they don't always talk about their feelings," Richardson explains.
"It's one of those things that is really so simple but knocks on the door of so many agendas."
In addition to group meetings to discuss their feelings, the girls spent time at KYM's outdoor education facility, where they took part in archery and shared stories around a campfire.
"We even had a boat - the Dream Boat - on which we took the girls out and got them to [symbolically] throw a dream into the water," says Richardson.
However, the main part of the project was getting the girls to paint portraits of themselves, depicting them as "the goddess they saw themselves as".
The portraits were enlarged for the Big Love Little Sista festival, held in October, which acted as a celebration of the girls involved with the programme.
"We wanted to show that not only can young people connect across these different issues, but that this kind of intervention was really good for targeted purposes," says Richardson. "It was fabulous, because we were all standing up on stage talking about the benefits of the project."
Richardson adds that KYM has received "fabulous feedback" on the project from social workers, foster carers, youth workers and parents, as well as from the girls themselves, who all reported a noticeable change in their confidence.
"It was fabulous and now they're all talking about themselves passionately," she says.
In addition to running an annual programme, KYM will now run monthly "little sista circles" for girls to connect and talk about their feelings and dreams - something Richardson believes is crucial for improving their outcomes.
"Over the past few years with all the cuts, lots of really good youth work has dropped off and one of the things that's gone is single sex youth work," she explains.
"Our idea was to acknowledge that this kind of work is critical and makes young people less likely to be sexually exploited."
Richardson is also in the early stages of developing the Big Love Our Brother initiative for boys.
"There's no point in just doing a girls' group," she says.
"We're thinking about how this model will work with young men and how we get the resources to do a pilot."
KYM will be exhibiting the girls' portraits at the Women of the World Festival, which will be held at London's Southbank Centre in March.