Unique Free Travel Program for Teen Girls

Each summer, Inspiring Girls Expeditions provides experiences in science, art, critical thinking, and the outdoors. The organization forms teams of teen girls to explore an ice-covered volcano in Washington State, kayak in Resurrection Bay, Alaska, or study glaciers in Alaska or Switzerland. The organization is not looking for the best athletes, students with the highest grades, or those who participate in the most extracurricular activities.

Before applying for acceptance to a free expedition, read up on the program at inspiringgirls.org/. The deadline for creating an account is January 19, 2018 and all applications must be submitted by January 31, 2018. Since two teachers need to provide recommendations, act quickly to provide them with the necessary forms.

Remember that you are applying to be a member of a team. Whatever you are passionate about (science, environment, outdoors, art, philosophy, social issues, politics) suggests the unique contribution you can make to the team, and what teachers say about you should reinforce your interests. Teams are expected to have a diversity of backgrounds and life experiences and probably little or no access to opportunities similar to those on this expedition.

In addition to the opportunities offered by Inspiring Girls Expeditions, you'll find a list of many alternative programs at inspiringgirls.org and a way to be added to the organization's mailing list.

Girls of All Sizes and Cultural Backgrounds Can Be Smart

Kids always have loved playing with dolls, but the dolls have changed from country to country and throughout the years. Today, four dolls from MGA Entertainment have different cultural backgrounds, but they all are smart. Each doll comes with an experiment kit that can create a working volcano, lava light, glow stick necklace, or blueprint for a skateboard using ingredients kids have in their homes.

These new dolls are sold at Walmart, Toys "R" Us, Amazon, Kmart, and Joann Fabrics and Crafts. A Netflix Original series, titled Project MC2, features four girls, inspired by the dolls, who join a top secret spy organization.

For other examples of girls doing great things, see the earlier posts, "Break into a Happy Dance" and "Girl Power?"

Girl Power?

Lured by the romance of joining the "jihadi girl power subculture," young tech-savvy Western women are developing contacts with ISIS terrorists, just like the Latin Queens who have been drawn to the gang of Latin Kings. The question is: Are women who join terrorist groups and gangs exhibiting girl power or their willingness to become tools of male power? Are terrorist groups grooming women to use their quick reflexes to detonate car bombs, their devotion to become suicide bombers, or their feminine wiles to return to their home countries to attack targets determined by men?

      Female Kurdish soldiers also have taken up arms against ISIS. Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned Marxist leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has long fought a war for independence from Turkey, recognized how his support for gender equality would help enlist women who understand ISIS's intention to restrict the rights of women.

 Girl power is seen in other forms by the following women:

• Malala Yousafzai The Pakistani girl who recovered from being shot in the head by the Taliban and went onto win a Nobel Peace Prize for supporting the education of women throughout the world  In 2015, Time magazine named her one of the "100 Most Influential People." Her story is told in the book, I Am Malala.
• Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe This nun from the order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, recognized as one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" in 2014,  ministers to the girls abducted and raped by soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army in Southern Sudan and Uganda. At the Saint Monica Vocational School in Gulu, Uganda, these girls learn to grow their own food, make their own clothes, tenderly care for their children, and sew the purses and other items they sell to support themselves and their families. Profits from the book, Sewing Hope, the story of Sister Rosemary, support her work.

Also, consider the three women that National Geographic has identified as "Emerging Explorers."

• Mantza Morales Casanova When this Mexican woman saw children harming animals and plants, she decided to form Humanity United to Nature in Harmony for Beauty (HUNAB), an organization determined: 1) to put education about the environment into schools, 2) create Ceiba Petandra Park, a free area where 64,000 children can have an interactive learning experience about climate change, wetland conservation, wildlife protection, and pollution, and 3) to provide the education that children need to become environmental leaders who change the world.
• Shivani Bhalla Determined to save Kenya's lions, she founded: 1) Lions Kids Camp, where children often see lions in the wild for the first time, and 2) Ewaso Lions, a community outreach program designed to give tribal warriors, women, and children reasons to embrace conservation and to respect and coexist with lions.
• Shabana Basij-Rasikh At a risk to her own life and theirs, her parents sent her to a school in Afghanistan, where she excelled and went on to earn a degree from Middlebury College in the United States. To prepare other girls to attend universities abroad, she co-founded the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, a boarding school for girls. She has said, "The most effective antidote to the Taliban is to create the best educated leadership generation in Afghanistan's history. Our girls of today - the women of tomorrow - will make it happen."