Deborah is a former performing artist with a background in dance, theater and developing performances that develop the expressive capacities of inner city youth. She has been teaching for over 35 years in Greater Boston through numerous artist in residences, and local universities including Wellesley, Simmons, Lesley, and Dean. She remains on the Faculty of Wellesley. In her work at Girls’ LEAP, her primary responsibilities have been curriculum development, teacher training, and fostering community partnerships. She is the Mom of a 21 year old “empowered woman”.
How are Girls' LEAP programs different from other self-defense programs?
Girls LEAP curriculum has an equal focus on the self-reflective skills as on the physical.
These include: self-awareness, conflict resolution, and anger management. All the skills are introduced to the girls as overarching topics which the participants delve into from their own stories and experiences. They practice saying no and verbal self-defense through role play, and learn how to assess situations in terms of their own personal safety. Most self-defense programs only teach how to hit and kick, but not how to negotiate and resolve conflict.
Girls’ LEAP is also a traveling program, which means we partner with schools and community centers all over greater Boston to bring our programs to girls’ own neighborhoods.
Why did you pick your specific approach?
We researched programs that had track records of effective behavioral change (such as AIDS prevention) and also programs that were not effective (DARE). We did additional general research on best practices for girls only programs which we found to include attributes such as intentional mentoring, creating a girls-only safe space, fostering healthy physical development as well as life skills and social/emotional growth. Our programs are carefully crafted with all these things in mind. We spent about 2 years developing the “ideal program”
Why did you choose to serve the age group that you did?
In 1997 we chose the 8-18 year range because at the time there were no services or programs offered specifically for girls to develop skills in violence prevention. The violence prevention programs that were available focused on 18 years and older, were very focused on rape, and often populated by a portion of women who were already sexual assault survivors.
Why is it so important for urban girls to participate in girls-only programming?
Girls are increasingly cruel and aggressive with each other- they have been taught by the media and their environments to see each other as threats and competitors. They lack the experience or the opportunity to foster positive relationships with other girls, and so are increasingly isolated and lonely. They need safe spaces to explore their identity, to enlarge their vision of what they are capable of, and to develop empathetic and powerful relationships with each other and with women.
What are the future goals for Girls' LEAP Self-Defense both organizationally and programmatically?
We envision a move to a neighborhood site in Boston where we can set some deep roots. Ideally our new space would house additional programs, host a Teen Empowerment Center, and be a safe space for women and girls to build community and their own strengths.
On the program side we intend to continue to work in Boston, to partner with multiple sites and organizations, and to continue to grow and enhance the leadership programs for our Teen and College mentors. We hope to develop a fee for service model to support our inner city programs. Lastly we are forging ties with agencies that have state wide reach to offer our programs beyond Greater Boston.
As we continue to grow and serve more girls we aim to raise our issue to the public eye, taking the safety of girls beyond the individual level to an issue of community wellbeing.
Personally, I see LEAP as a great program that can immensely help girls in dangerous situations as well as in boosting their confidence. I agree that girls "need safe spaces to explore their identity" which LEAP achieves. Through LEAP, girls learn how to be able to defend themselves through hitting, kicking, as well as through their verbal skills. By the training that LEAP offers, girls discover new things about themselves, they may achieve what they think was not possible, and find themselves seeing themselves as well as life in a different perspective.
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