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Advocate: Claire Mysko, author and co-founder of Inside Beauty
Websites: Inside Beauty, ClaireMysko.com
About: Claire’s outreach program, Inside Beauty, gives girls and women a reality check on the messages they receive from the media and their peers. She works with model and recovered bulimic Magali Amadei to speak at schools and conferences about eating disorder prevention and media literacy. Claire is also the author of You’re Amazing! A No Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self. She lives in Brooklyn.

Respect Rx: What inspired you to get involved in girl advocacy?
Claire: I suffered with disordered eating for many years, starting in middle school. My work in body image has a lot to do with wanting to use my own personal experience to do something positive. Middle school stands out in my mind as one of the most difficult and challenging times in my life and that’s also when I started my first diet. So I feel very closely connected to that age range. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to write a book targeted at teens and tweens because I think girls need a lot of support at that time.

What strikes you as the most pressing issue facing girls today?
One of the common issues with body image and disordered eating is perfectionism, and my book is about empowering girls to feel good about who they are. With disordered eating, there are many different factors—media influence, family influence, peer pressure to be thin, and research shows there are some biological components as well. So I don’t think we can say one particular thing causes eating disorders. The solution has to be a holistic approach. There’s so much pressure on girls to be perfect, and a big part of that is tied up with how they feel about their looks. Girls need to have strong support systems, to be able to reach out to the caring adults in their lives, and to approach media messages with a critical eye.

A lot of girls feel that they will be happier if they’re thinner or have the right look. They spend so much time and energy on it and sometimes put their physical health at risk. We have girls skipping meals on a regular basis. I use the term “disordered eating” because I hear many girls say they’re not anorexic—but their approach to food, weight and eating is not healthy. The quality of their lives is impacted by their obsession with food, weight and the desire to fit a physical mold. In magazines, anorexia is always attached to a picture of a very emaciated woman. Yet there are so many people who have problems and you would never know it by looking at them.

What advocacy accomplishment are you most proud of?
What’s most rewarding to me is to be able to hear girls’ experiences and talk to them one-on-one. I interviewed a lot of girls for the book, and being able to give them a forum to express themselves is so important. Once you put these issues on the table and say it’s OK to talk about them, it opens the doors for others and builds connections between girls. Girls find it very comforting to know they’re not alone.

If you could talk to yourself as a young girl, what would you say?
Give yourself a break more often. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You don’t have to be perfect all the time. In fact, that fear of making mistakes is so limiting. There’s such a value in taking healthy risks in life. As I got older, I learned that more. The fear of not being perfect can really rob you of some great experiences and exciting new adventures. You might mess up and you might not be the best at everything all the time, but you can have a lot of fun and learn a lot along the way.

Comments (1) | by Courtney on August 11

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Advocate: Sejal Hathi, founder, CEO and executive director of Girls Helping Girls (and a high school student!)
Website: Empower A Girl
About: Sejal is a 16-year-old student at Notre Dame High School in San Jose, Calif. In her spare time, she loves writing, dancing, reading, playing with her dog Coco and spending time with family. She is currently preparing for a trip to Kolkata, India, where her organization will build a library for the daughters of commercial sex-trade workers.
Her mission: "We work to empower girls to create social change and build a movement of change makers."

Respect Rx: What inspired you to get into girl advocacy?
Sejal: I’ve always been really passionate about social change initiatives, but the one organization that really was the catalyst for my involvement with girl-related issues was Girls For A Change. When I joined Girls For A Change at the start of high school, I was really passionate and driven, but I still did not have that much direction. GFC revealed to me that any girl, however disadvantaged, can leverage her power to make a difference. The more social change projects I performed, the more I realized that the most fundamental problems affecting youth are not poverty or environmental degradation or political corruption. Rather, it was ignorance and the lack of a cosmopolitan cultivation amongst all youth that taught them that they do have a voice—they can be leaders for change. I desired to really work with the population that I thought was most vulnerable, most marginalized, most in need of love and empowerment: girls.

One project in particular that I performed with GFC was to empower the women and children victims of the Darfur genocide. I was able to befriend some of the girls there. After meeting with them, I was shown again the gap and the vast chasm that exists between girls like me who have the resources and support network to create change and those girls who don’t. Millions of girls in developing countries do not have those resources, do not have that hope, support or knowledge. That’s why I decided to muster my resources to create an organization that empowers girls.

What strikes you as the most pressing issue girls face today?
A lack of awareness—not only about global issues, but also about their own individual power and their own worth to humankind. I think a lack of awareness is the root of many problems.

How does your organization combat that problem?
We work to empower girls to create social change and build a movement of change makers by mobilizing girls through two primary initiatives. The first one is the Empower a Girl program. It’s a grassroots sister team program that partners girls in the United States with those in developing countries to achieve four global goals: eradicating poverty, increasing access to education, improving health and promoting peace.

The girls work together on curriculum and toolkits that we’ve developed to learn more about the issue and how it relates to their local communities, and collaborate to create social change projects that directly address the goal. This program also has a fundraising and philanthropic component in which we raise funds to empower girls overseas to pursue a holistic education, including scholarships, uniforms, school books and lunches.

Our second program is the Sisters 4 Peace Network. It’s a dynamic social change movement that provides one-on-one mentorship, toolkits, guidance and resources to girls around the world who want to launch their own organizations. Sisters 4 Peace is operated by a network of peace ambassadors who are successful girl entrepreneurs from all over the globe who are willing to contribute additional mentorship to the change makers in their regions. In total, so far, we have reached almost 1,000 girls in about 10 different countries through the Sisters 4 Peace Network and the Empower a Girl program, all in about a year.

What advocacy accomplishments are you most proud of?
I’ve done hundreds of speeches for girls, motivating them to believe in themselves, take action and understand they are really a united and unstoppable force. I’m really proud that I’m making a difference in their lives in that way.

What other advocates or organizations do you admire?
I really admire We Are Family Foundation, which was inspired by one of my role models, Mattie Stepanek. He was a child peacemaker who claimed that peace is possible and that we are all a mosaic of gifts that must be nurtured, accepted and cherished. He really advocated that anyone can do anything to make a difference in this world. We Are Family Foundation was born out of Mattie’s vision, as well as his desire to promote reconciliation after September 11. The work they do—promoting education in developing countries, empowering young peacemakers—is truly venerable.

Where do you see yourself in five to ten years?
In five years, I see myself finishing my undergraduate years and still growing the organization. In ten years, I want to go into the field of medicine. I see myself practicing as a doctor but still volunteering heavily. I really want to get involved in Doctors Without Borders and volunteer in clinics overseas—especially in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing parts of the world that do not have access to adequate health care and medical facilities. I want to get involved and see that access be made more equal.

What would you say to a young girl who wants to get involved in girl advocacy but isn’t sure where to start?
I would advise her to join our network and be trained! I would also advise her to look inside herself and discover what her interests are, what her passions are. That’s the first step to realizing how a person can become a change maker—realizing your own assets and how you’d like to contribute to the movement. Understand that you are a change maker at heart. As Dr Seuss said, ‘If someone like you didn’t care a whole awful lot, nothing would change for the better—it would not.”

Sejal’s picks:
We Are Family Foundation
Girls For A Change

—Interview by guest editor Tara Swords

Comments (1) | by Courtney on July 16

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Advocate: Author Debbie Reber
Blog: Smart Girls Know
Recent book for teens: Chill: Stress-Reducing Techniques for a More Balanced, Peaceful You
About: Debbie lives in Seattle with her husband Derin, her son Asher and her dog Baxter. Read more about Debbie on her web site.
Her mission: "To create social media that inspires and empowers girls—from tweens to teens to young women and even women—to be their most authentic selves so they can live their best, most fulfilled lives."

Respect Rx: What originally inspired you to get into girl advocacy?
Debbie: I’ve always had this really strong desire to affect other people in a positive way. When I moved to New York after college, I was working for UNICEF but my volunteering always centered on teens. I volunteered for a homeless shelter for teens in New York for a couple of years. I think the year I was 15 was the worst year of my life, but I’m one of those people who is always looking to grow, learn, move on and recover from past mistakes. So as I acquired that information I felt a really strong urge to give back in the hopes of helping people get to that point sooner and skip some of the painful mistakes I made. And it’s part of who I am—so when I talk to girls’ groups, I’m a very open person. I will share anything and everything. And I find that can often be the bridge because being open helps teens realize that I get where they’re at.

What advocacy accomplishment are you most proud of?
The thing that I’m feeling connected to right now and happy about is my work as a coach with Girls on the Run. It’s a 12-week national program and they work with 3rd to 6th grade girls. It’s a curriculum using running as a tool to deal with all these other issues like media literacy or bullying. I’ve coached for a number of seasons. When I was first doing this, people thought I was crazy—working full time, raising a child and volunteering a couple of days a week. But I got so much out of it because so much of my work hasn’t been one-on-one with girls, and to have that opportunity is just awesome. This season, I’m doing a 5K with my little 4th-grade running buddy.

What other advocates or organizations do you admire?
I like the work that Mind on the Media is doing in terms of media literacy. I’m a big fan of New Moon magazine and Teen Voices for giving a voice to girls and letting them be on the board and run the ship. I’m involved locally with the Seattle Girls’ School on the board of directors. It’s a new school that’s very cutting-edge in their approach to education. They highlight math and science, which is great, but they also have this incredible anti-bias curriculum and they’re walking the walk. They’re turning out girls who know, in 8th grade, who they are, their strengths and weaknesses and how to work in teams. They’re set up to be incredible leaders and they’re all social change agents. I was a founding member of WriteGirl and I’m still on the advisory board. And Girls Inc. and the Girl Scouts are doing great work as well. Of course, I’m a fan of Courtney and Respect Rx and I’m totally excited to get involved with the leadership training for the Respect Rallies. I think the work that she and Audrey Brashich have done together is great.

What strikes you as the most pressing issue girls face today?
What I see in my work is low self-esteem in girls. It’s so hard to watch girls change from 5th grade and then they’re different people when you check in with them in 7th grade. They doubt themselves so much. It’s hard to watch girls go through that phase where—unless they have a strong support system in place—they tend to get lost.

Tell us more about your mission?
I think my whole purpose is to give girls information. I don’t try to do super-teen speak, I don’t use all kinds of text shorthand. I just try to connect with them in a way that feels really genuine, give them information in a way that’s relevant to their lives. There are so many things that if I had known, even one phrase could have made a huge difference in how I saw the world. Just knowing that my emotions are controlled by the things I tell myself. And knowing that connection and realizing that by changing your thoughts—which is a very conscious thing you can do—you can affect everything else.

If you had a chance to talk to your younger self, what would you tell her?
Two things come to mind: One is to not look for self-worth through boys, because I did a lot of that in college and it’s the part of my life that is still hard for me to think about. Just to tell myself “that wasn’t going to cut it for you or give you what you needed.” And the other thing is knowing that things are going to work out just fine, that there’s so much more to life than your world at 15. Just hang in there and get through it, and your whole world is going to open up.

What would you say to a woman who wants to get involved in girl advocacy but isn’t sure where to start?
I would say there are a gazillion opportunities out there. Find something you’re passionate about separately and bring that love to a program for girls in that area. For me, running is a passion of mine and my work with Girls on the Run connects those two things. It’s the perfect thing for me because I bring all of my energy to it. And just to know that by being a self-assured, confident woman, you are by default a role model for every girl you come into contact with. They’re looking at who you are and deciding, “Do I want to be like that?” I’m very conscious when I’m interacting with my girls from Girls on the Run. They ask me how old I am and I’m careful not say, “Ugh, I don’t want to tell you.” I say, “I’m 38,” because I know they’re listening to me and they’re going to make a judgment about how I feel about myself by how I respond to that question. Just know that we’re being watched, and even if it’s not a formal situation, you can always have a positive impact on girls.

Debbie's picks:
Girls Inc
Girl Scouts
Mind on the Media
New Moon
Seattle Girls School
Teen Voices
WriteGirl

—Interview by guest editor Tara Swords

Comments (0) | by Courtney on June 30

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