Somehowlost: SheHeroes and Colorado Children's Day

Sunday, August 1, 2010

SheHeroes and Colorado Children's Day

Keystone, CO - Well, here we are on the first day of yet another road trip. We got our place in Lafayette emptied, cleaned, rented and all of our stuff in storage. All my burning man crap has been stuffed into the Passat and we're on our way our way to California. This time we have about two weeks to make the trek. This morning Suwei and I came up with a workable plan, so we're heading north in the morning.

As Suwei is currently chilling out in front of the Food Channel, I have time for another post. This time we're going back to April 30th and the Colorado Children's Day in Boulder. I was there volunteering at a booth for SheHeroes, non-profit organization that Suwei and I got involved with a few months earlier. These photos were used to promote their presence at the event on their website: http://sheheroes.org/2010/05/sheheroes-at-colorado-childrens-day/

SheHeroes was founded by a few of Suwei's MIT sorority sisters, Sue Nagle and Sophia Yen. Sophia had asked us to gather up a few bodies for a fundraiser in Denver. We failed miserably and ended up attending the event friendless. However, we were so impressed by the organization's goals and mission that we volunteered to help out where we could.

What is SheHeroes? This come straight from their website:

Free, Educational New Media

SheHeroes will showcase heroic women’s achievements through first-person video interviews. We will provide this free, inspiring and educational programming through videos on the SheHeroes.org website and on zero profit DVD’s. We will promote episodes through social networking sites (like Facebook and Twitter), and through other related kids’ websites.

We aim to reach 20% of tweens who have broadband access, and to extend our reach by providing our high-quality programming to schools, librarians and after-school providers.

Inspiring Tweens to Reach Their Potential

SheHeroes biographies will target the tween audience, children between the ages of 9 and 14 years old. SheHeroes will inspire them to reach their full potential through exposure to real women role models, disbanding self-perceived barriers.
Episodes are designed for viewing and discussion with an adult family member, educator or mentor. By fostering positive connections with adults as well as the SheHeroes, we hope to prevent future poor choices such as losing interest in math and science, drug use, pregnancy, eating disorders, and more.

Teen Interviewers Learn, Provide Inspiration in Turn

Each SheHero will be interviewed by high school students from partner organizations, such as Girls Inc. and Girl Scouts.

The opportunity to audition and interview a role model will create youth leadership development in these interviewers in addition to exposing them to various career paths, including journalism.

We just really like the idea that there is someone out there providing positive, successful, smart role models for girls. This seems even more poignant now that we know we are going to have a girl of our own.

Anyway, they called up Suwei and soon had her helping out with their accounting. I, on the other hand, was called up to help out with the logistics of staging a promotional event they were planning to host in September or October. The Colorado Children's day event was a bit of a test run, as they had never really had a presence outside of the world wide web.

On a budget of "next to nothing," we managed to put together a booth and some simple promotional materials. It was so last minute that we had the SheHeroes signs made up by one of the volunteer's two kids and a few of their friends. It worked. We had quite a successful day.

Please.. if this seems like something that would interest you or something you would like to be involved in, please check out their website:

SheHeroes.org

They are still in their infancy and could really use the help and support.