Local event allows teen girls to make their voices heard

Image Courtesy of Illinois State University

NORMAL, Ill. – The That’s What Teens Say program returned to Bloomington-Normal on Sunday, Jan 26.

Put on in partnership with the What She Said program and Family Community Resource Center, the event gave teen girls a platform to share their personal stories. National Program Director Jenette Jurczyk gave insight into how this program for local teen girls started and why she believes it is important for them to have a safe space to be themselves.

“Several years into producing this event and getting to work with women sharing their stories, we started having discussions about how powerful it is when we create a safe space for women to be vulnerable and share some, you know, some truth about some really hard topics, and how incredible it could be if we could create that same opportunity for teen girls, specifically during this time when they’re getting a lot of messaging about who they’re supposed to be,” Jurcyzk said.

The three-day event consisted of guest speakers and coaching sessions for the girls. At the end of the event, they performed a piece about female empowerment for the community on stage. Jurczyk also says that the main reason for starting this program was to let teen girls know that their opinions matter while giving them a place to express them.

“Step one is we create a safe space for these girls to talk about the things that are important to them,” Jurcyzk said. “We immediately get rid of that, you know, idea that anything they say they’re going to be judged on. It’s such a nurturing, safe space.”

If there was one thing the teen girls could take away from this event and use for the rest of their lives, Jurczyk says that it would be that they deserve to have their voices heard.

” …That what they have to say matters,” Jurcyzk said. “Every one of them deserves to be center stage and have people listen to what they have to say.”

The What She Said Project started in Champaign, IL in 2019. They just celebrated five years in Bloomington-Normal.