Grade 8 can be absolutely terrifying.
You’re trying to fit in, desperate to make friends and scared of rejection. It’s anything but easy.
Now imagine Grade 8 at Burnaby’s Byrne Creek Secondary, with the highest percentage of student refugees in the Lower Mainland. Many are dealing with culture shock, language barriers, poverty and trauma from political violence.
“When I came here, I was so shy, I remember just staying in the library the whole of Grade 8,” says Jeanne Mubalama, a Grade 12 student originally from Africa. “Everyone was so tall, the girls were so tall. They were all so terrifying.”
On a bright but bone-chilling afternoon, Jeanne is one of four female students, discussing their Grade 8 experiences around a table in the school’s community room. The others laugh in sympathy and offer their anecdotes: trying to make friends but feeling shy, speaking in squeaky nervous voices, feeling pressured and worrying about what everyone else thinks of you.
When you ask where these students are from, their stories are complicated; but all came to Canada from Africa as children and grappled with the inevitable culture shock that comes with life in a new country.
A few years ago, community school coordinator Iha Farquhar-Hayer was concerned about this particular group of girls. They stood out as leaders and had potential, but it wasn’t clear if they were going to forge a healthy path or a dysfunctional one.
“They are lovely, wonderful kids, but you can tell, they need extra support,” Farquhar-Hayer says.
That’s when she connected with Loretta Cella, founder of the Passion Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to helping young women become leaders and mentors to their peers. But why just focus on girls?
“If I could have another mini-me, I would do a program with boys and girls,” she says.
Then she cites the stats from the Canadian Women’s Foundation: more 20 per cent of girls in B.C. deliberately cut or harmed themselves, about 75 per cent of Aboriginal girls under age 18 have been sexually abused, and the percentage of girls who feeling self confident drops from 36 per cent in Grade 6 to only 14 per cent by Grade 10. That’s not to mention the eating disorders and depression and sexualization of young girls.
Cella meets regularly with the Byrne Creek students and uses her life coaching skills in a teen-friendly way to help them develop strong self-esteem, a healthy self-awareness and good leadership skills. The girls learned to rewrite the internal script about themselves, challenge their negative attitudes and reframe their thinking.
Three or four years later, it’s hard to believe these girls were ever considered at-risk. They come across as confident, charismatic, articulate, friendly and funny. They smile and make eye contact when greeting you, and they speak on the importance of self-authenticity with wisdom beyond their years.
“We had to find ourselves and know and be aware of our emotions and our self-esteem and how we saw each other,” Jeanne says.
Behind the Passion Foundation is a pay-it-forward ethos, and the deal with Cella is you have to give back.
At Byrne Creek, the group started the CAUSE Girlz Empowerment Project, which involves about 10 female students, in grades 10 through 12. They meet twice a week to plan things with the new Grade 8 girls, like cooking and watching movies together. The idea is to help ease the anxiety around that terrifying transition while providing positive role models and imparting wisdom to the next generation.
The girls are also giving back for help they’ve received beyond Byrne Creek. Grade 11 student Margaret Anteros credits Marlene Eberding, a youth leadership coordinator at the Burnaby Neighbourhood House for being like a second mother.
“She’s helped me through a lot,” Margaret says. “Without her, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, so I kind of want to be the leader who helps girls do that as well. I don’t ever want to see a girl cry because somebody is saying they are not good enough, because they are.”
Farquhar-Hayer gets choked up when she looks back on how far these girls have come.
“Nothing replaces the magic that happens when kids support kids, and so,” she says with a long pause, “yeah, it makes me a little teary. I don’t know how to quantify it, the benefit of having these young women be those leaders, and be the people who listen and have the wisdom to say, ‘You’re OK the way you are, your experience is OK. We are going to help you with this.”
And hopefully the Grade 8 experience will be less terrifying for the generations of girls to come.
For more on the Passion Foundation, click here.
