Girls Inc. Media Literacy

The programme has different modules for girls of different ages, culminating in a final component where young women learn digital video production skills for use in community action projects. They work together to identify shared issues, conduct research, and take action to address those issues, a process that organisers hope empowers them and helps to reinforce their rights and responsibilities as active citizens in their community. Through implementing a community action project, they aim to expand their capacity to contribute and bring about positive change.

In the pre-production stage, small groups choose a focus issue of importance to both themselves and to the local community - such as gang violence. Participants then learn and practice storyboarding, camera, audio, lighting, and interview skills before going out to videotape interviews with community members about the chosen issue.

During the postproduction, participants learn and use digital video editing skills, such as importing footage; editing clips; adding sound effects, visual transitions, titles, and credits; and exporting work into various formats for exhibitions, including public screenings and web-based presentations. They use these skills to craft public service announcements expressing their point of view about the topic. At the public screenings, groups share their community interviews and public service announcements with local notables and the general community.

Throughout the production process, the young women create relationships with interviewees, local media, and community leaders. The participants also develop individual and group portfolios that demonstrate changes in their knowledge, skills and confidence, both in video production and as community change agents in their community.

Gender, Violence, Rights, Sexual Health.

On a typical day a young woman may be confronted with messages from numerous media - radio, television, newspaper, World Wide Web, billboards - before she even gets to school.

According to a 1999 survey, the typical American girl uses media of some kind (television, radio, computers, etc.) for over 5 hours per day.

In a 1995 survey of 2,000 children in third to twelfth grades conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, Inc., it was revealed that girls are often more likely than boys to have seen programmes that upset or disturbed them. Girls were more likely to say that there is too much sex on television and that television is too violent.

Girls Inc. Media Literacy includes five age-appropriate components for girls and young women ages 6–18: Media and Me, for girls ages 6–8; Media Smarts, for girls ages 9–11; Take a Second Look, for girls ages 12–14; Girls Get the Message, for girls ages 15–18, and the program's fifth, culminating component, Girls Make the Message, for girls ages 14–18.