Featured Programs
Story of a Rape Survivor
(Story of a Rape Survivor (SOARS) is an award winning multimedia performance that entertains as well as educates the audience about sexual assault prevention. Featuring the music of Nina Simone,Maxwell, and Sade, SOARS tells one woman’s story about how she reclaimed her body, sexuality, and self-esteem after being sexually assaulted in college. SOARS is a cutting-edge theatrical experience that stars a diverse cast of women, combining photographs, dance, spoken-word poetry and music as a way to educate about healing from sexual violence. The ultimate aim is to show that the shame, guilt and self-blame that rape victims too often experience can be eased; that the stories of rape survivors can be one of triumph and hope.Book this Event »
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Girl/Friends Leadership Institute
The Girl/Friends Leadership Institute are comprehensive programs that empower adolescent girls to make healthy sexual and reproductive choices and become youth leaders in the movement to end violence against girls and women. Girl/Friends uses the multimedia and digital arts, yoga, and art therapy to educate young women about sexual health, and sexual and dating violence. Students work with mentors and receive training in sexual assault counseling, reproductive justice, and medical and legal advocacy. In the year-long after-school program and the summer institute, each student will be able to utilize the arts as tools for social change and healing, create strong sexual and dating violence policies and prevention programs at her school, and have the resources and skills to teach, mentor, and advocate for other girls in her school and community.Book this Event »
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B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S Summer Institute
The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S. Summer Institute is an art-based summer program for adolescent boys to prevent violence against women and girls. Witha focus on co-ed programming, the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S. (Boys Rising and Organizing to Help End Rape and Sexism) uses digital media, spoken word poetry, and art therapy to educate young men about sexual health and preventing sexual and dating violence. In this program, students not only learn how to become male allies in the sexual assault movement, but work with closely with mentors and design their own year-long curriculum to become peer educators and social justice leaders in their communities and schools.Book this Event »
Fi/Zanmi Summer Institute
Fi/Zanmi Summer Program: Fi/Zanmi (Girl/Friends in Haitian Creole) is an art-based, sexual-assault prevention for teenage Haitian girls in Port-au-Prince. In the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, women and girls have been especially vulnerable to various forms of sexual violence. Working with Haitian organizations in Haiti and the US, Fi/Zanmi uses the multimedia arts, art therapy, and leadership development to help the girls address sexual violence and create sexual assault prevention programs in their communities.Book this Event »
Lectures
The Audacity to Heal: A Public Conversation about Surviving Sexual Assault
The Audacity to Heal: A Public Conversation about Surviving Sexual Assault The Audacity to Heal includes rare and never-before-seen photos and video footage from the award-winning multi-media performance, Story of a Rape Survivor (SOARS). SOARS’s creators, Scheherazade and Salamishah Tillet, discuss the role of the arts can play in ending sexual violence, the specific challenges that victims face when they want to break silence around sexual violence, and how secondary victims of sexual violence, such as family members, friends, and intimate partners, can become allies to sexual assault survivors.Book this Event »
Our Kind of Girls: Sexual Violence and Adolescent Girls
This conversation discusses Girl/Friends, the collaborative sexual-assault prevention program between adult and adolescent girls. By sharing the results from Girl/Friends, “Our Kind of Girls” works with adult allies and school administrators to address the sexual violence experienced by their students by helping them develop a youth-led sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention curricula.Book this Event »
Change Agents: Friends, Family Members, and Partners of Survivors
This is a lecture for partners, family members, and friends to help them deal with the anger, guilt, and hurt they feel when they learn that their loved one has been sexually assaulted.Book this Event »
Rape, Popular Culture, and Post-Racial America
What is the relationship between race and sexual violence in our “post-racial” era? By looking at recent high-profile cases, pop music videos, film, feminist and legal scholarship, this lecture discusses how old racial stereotypes continue to shape public perceptions of sexual assault victims and assailants.Book this Event »
Workshops
Arts. Activism. Advocacy.
This lecture discusses how sexual assault activism and victim rights advocacy can serve as key components of sexual assault recovery, focusing on how survivor art, activism, and advocacy can be used to empower survivors and contribute to social change in the community.Book this Event »
Sexual Assault in the 21st Century: The Digital and Media Arts
The Internet has not only vastly changed the way we communicate, becoming the virtual pathways for processing information of all sorts and socializing, but it has increasingly become the hunting ground for sexual predators as well. Using new methods in art therapy and the digital arts, such as photography, projection, video, twitter, and facebook, and live feed, this talk discusses how state-of-the-art technology can empower communities and individuals to prevent and heal from sexual violence.Book this Event »
Drum Majors: Training Youth Activists to End Sexual Violence
This is a youth-led workshop that organizes high school students to end sexual assault and sexual harassment in their schools. This interactive, multi-media workshop trains high school students to design anti-violence curriculums (such as the Clothesline project),educate their peers, and advocate for sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention programs in their neighborhood as well as schools.Book this Event »
College Leaders: Working With College Students to End Campus Sexual Violence
The Young Leaders training supports and provides additional resources to college anti-violence organizations. By emphasizing the need for diversity and popular culture literacy in anti-violence programs, we work with administrators and students to devise training, recruitment strategies, community outreach, and campus education programs.Book this Event »
Safety Abroad: Addressing Sexual Assault on Study Abroad Programs
When students study abroad, they often travel without training in personal safety and an understanding of cross-cultural attitudes towards sexuality and sexual assault. This training helps administrators and students develop comprehensive study-abroad sexual assault resources, insuring that students are aware of university protocol and services for them while they are abroad.Book this Event »
Upcoming Events
In The News:
Chicago Tribune Op-Ed by Co-Founder, Salamishah Tillet, and Elizabeth Mendez Berry: Chris Brown and Rihanna: A Teachable Moment WastedJanuary 9, 2012 - June 1, 2012
Elective Female Health, Art and Wellness Classes, North Lawndale College Prep Charter High School(NLCP), Chicago, ILJanuary 16, 2012 - May 16, 2012
Girl/Friends Afterschool Program 2012 at NLCPFebruary 24, 2012 - May 11, 2012
Girl/Friends Leadership Institute
Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, Chicago, IL
March 6, 2012
SOARS Performance, Oak Park and River Forest High School, Chicago, ILMarch 9, 2012
SOARS Multimedia Performance
Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, Chicago, IL
Girls’ Campus
7pm - 9pm Private Performance
March 10, 2012
Sexual Assault in the 21st Century: Using Digital and Media Arts To End Sexual ViolenceMount Mary College
Gerhardinger Center, Room 109
1:30pm - 3:30pm
Free and open to the public
March 17, 2012
Training The Parents: Girl/Friends Parent Leadership Institute, North Lawndale College Prep Charter High SchoolMarch 18-24, 2012
International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2012April 5, 2012
SOARS Multimedia PerformanceColumbia University, Miller Theatre
2960 Broadway, New York, NY
7pm-9pm
Free and open to the public
April 11, 2012
Girl/Friends Clothesline Project
North Lawndale College Prep High School
April 14, 2012
Flip-It: Students Organizing to End Violence
Calling all LGBT Students and Students of Color for a New York City Summit on Ending Sexual Violence
Pace University, 1 Pace Plaza, New York, NY
Apply by Monday March 12th Here
Sponsored by: A Long Walk Home, NOW-NYC Service Fund, and SAFER
April 22, 2012
We Are Girl/Friends! Art on Community Violence, Justice and Healing Book Reading
Women and Children's First Book Store
5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60640
4:00pm
May 5, 2012
Girl/Friends Leadership Institute partners with Afghan Women’s Writing Project and Neighborhood Writing Alliance on a Writing workshop at Harold Washington LibraryJune 18, 2012-July 27, 2012
Girl/Friends Leadership Institute 2012 summer training at NLCPAugust 22, 2012-August 24, 2012
National Sexual Assault Conference, Chicago Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Chicago ILVideo News Feature: ALWH on BET/Meet the Faith w/Ian Smith
Sexual Abuse, Healing, and Faith in the African American Community
Audio News Feature: ALWH on NPR
Teens Learn Sexual Violence Prevention Via
Art Therapy
