To educate and prepare girls for a lifetime of self-respect and healthy living.

Photos by:  Keith Thienemann/www.imageartwork.com

                 Andrew Wilds/www.andrewwildsphotography.com

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2008 GOTR 5K FUN RUN, NOVEMBER 22!

           The Girls on the Run program is a structured character development program that uses training for a 5k event as a means to teach essential life skills to 3rd-5th graders. Each individual lesson plan is based on the "Whole Person Concept". The "Whole Person Concept" stresses the importance of equally developing the spiritual, emotional, mental, social, and physical parts of the individual to create a well-balanced, whole person. The lesson plans are designed to encourage exploration and use of each of these five parts.

The topics covered over the 12 weeks are based on the work of Mario Fantini and Gerald Weinstein who found the problems expressed by students fall into three classifications:

 

· lack of identity,

· lack of connectedness

· feelings of powerlessness (i.e. lack of control over one's own life, not to be confused with exerting power over other people.)1

 

The curriculum is divided into three 4-week sessions that foster healthy growth in each of these three areas.

 

The first four-week session provides the participants with opportunities to:

 

· Gain an understanding of themselves

· Learn about their strengths and weaknesses and to set personal goals;

· Explore the importance of being physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy; AND

· Examine our own core values and what makes us unique.

 

The second four-week session provides the participants with opportunities to:

 

· Explore getting along within a group;

· Learn active listening and confrontation/assertive skills, as well as the importance of "positivism" in how we deal with others; AND

· Examine the components of good decision-making skills.

 

The last four weeks provides for the participants opportunities to:

 

· Explore our responsibility to the community;

· Analyze the cultural and social messages girls receive in the media and through other institutions;

· Examine their own stereotyping and discriminatory behavior;

· Define community and our collective and individual roles in it;

· Create and implement a community project;

· Be empowered to change their environment around them in a positive manner.

 

There are no other programs like the Girls on the Run program. It is an entirely new "genre" of youth programs. It uses sports, in this case running, to teach very specific and well-defined social

and personal skills. Research indicates that development of these skills will prevent the future display of at-risk behaviors resulting in fewer adolescent pregnancies, fewer eating disordered girls, less depression and suicide attempts, fewer substance/alcohol abuse problems and fewer confrontations with the juvenile justice system. And yet the Girls on the Run program is more that the program itself. It is a philosophy. It is a way of being. It not only impacts the girls who participate directly in the program, but supports efforts to provide an environment for all girls that nurture, develop, and celebrate their strengths.

1 Fantini, Regaining Excellence in Education, Merrill, 1986

 

HOW  IS THE GIRLS ON THE RUN® CURRICULUM STRUCTURED?

 

LEARNING GOALS OF GIRLS ON THE RUN CURRICULUM #1

LEARNING GOALS OF GIRLS ON TRACK

 

WHAT IS GIRLS ON THE RUN®?