You go girl - Preteens learn the ropes of growing up

DIANA PARKER
TODAY’S NEWS-HERALD
What can you learn from a paper plate? Seventy-five middle-school-aged girls gathered at the Hampton Inn recently to ask and answer that question and many others essential to their health, self-esteem and future success. The program is called You Go Girl! and it's designed specially for girls going through the difficult transition from
childhood to young adulthood. Havasu For Youth started the workshop as part of its LEARN program when it saw a need in that age group that wasn't being filled by other programs, according to Executive Director Melissa Dobar. A similar workshop for boys, called Wise Guys, is scheduled for Nov. 16. The day was a celebration of girl-ness with a heavy dose of frank information. Like members of the same tribe, the girls wore headbands bedecked with flowers, feathers and baubles. Initial shyness was all but wiped away when the girls were asked to go up to other girls and write something positive about them on the paper plates hanging on their backs.
Cheryl Wallsmith, a program coordinator at Havasu For Youth and the driving force behind the LEARN program, then asked the girls to read what had been written about them. "Nice eyes, pretty hair, great personality." "I want you to take these plates home and hang them on your mirror, or somewhere you look a lot … Everyone likes to have people say nice things about them," Wallsmith said. The day delivered not only good feelings but also a lot of solid information. Mary Lou O'Connell of HAVEN Family Resource Center pulled no punches when talking to the girls about abusive relationships and how to avoid them. "Any kind of violence and abuse is never about love — it's always about control," O'Connell said. "It always, always escalates. It never gets better unless you do something to make it go away."
A session on the female body by physician's assistant Jane Schopen was equally unflinching. Puberty, acne, breasts, weight and body image, sweat and body odor, genitals and menstruation all were all discussed openly and honestly. "The biggest sex organ in the body is the brain," Schopen told them. "At puberty the body is ready to make babies, but the brain isn't." After a session of Low Ropes games with members of the Lake Havasu City Rotary Club and lunch, it was time to get serious again with a presentation about drugs and their effect on the brain. "I'm pretty sure that by the time you're 20, every one of you will be faced with the decision to use drugs," Dobar told them. This was the second You Go Girl! workshop since the beginning of the LEARN program, and Wallsmith said a few girls always come forward with their own experiences of abuse or drug use in their families. The workshop connects them to the resources and information they need to get help.
At the end of the day, as participants energetically disbursed, Wallsmith was glowing from the girls' feedback. "They say, 'I want to come back, I want to come back.' That makes it all worthwhile, let me tell you," she said.