Who Are We?

Every Girl has the Potential to Help Shape a Better World

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We are a group of women and teen girls who believe that our stories have the power to shape our world. We are from all different communities and experiences. We think collaboration is about not surrendering but building something we all own. We believe that every issue has a million perspectives. We believe that girls have a power in their voices and their ideas. We believe to build leaders, we have to give girls ways to lead.  And we think that telling stories visually is the road to leadership. Meet the team here!

Meet the TVbyGIRLS team!

MISSION:

TVbyGIRLS inspires girls to develop their leadership potential, cross-cultural understanding, collaborative skills and ability to create compassionate change in the world through expression in media arts.

TVbyGIRLS Goals:

• To nurture compassion, intelligence, leadership, creativity and critical thinking skills in girls and express those traits in media arts.

• To engage girls to create a more just world and engage in social action with the tools of media.

• To introduce images, messages and stories into our communities offering diverse perspectives and help our communities to see girls and women as powerful leaders and contributors.

• To give girls and the people who love them, tools for battling the overwhelming saturation of defeating media images and messages received everyday.

• To create a production model that works authentically with girls in producing dynamic content for their peers.

• To support media arts projects created by and for girls and women that support the values of social justice and compassion.

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THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND TVBYGIRLS:

We are exposed to over 1000 images each day. All of us, all the time, are constantly bombarded with images and messages. We believe that human beings are hard wired to experience images and stories in a deeply instinctive, emotional way. The images and the messages become a part of our subconscious identity. They give us cues about who we are and how we should behave and ultimately, what we should strive to become. Youth, in particular, are vulnerable to these images, actively developing their ‘adult’ identities and behavior. Unfortunately, the majority of daily media messages promote the basest of human traits–greed, jealousy, cruelty, and selfishness. Not a very pretty picture of how to be in our society. 

But that is not the truth of us. At TVbyGIRLS, we work to powerfully communicate the more complicated, richer, more interesting mix of potential in youth. Through our workshops, we explore the emotional vocabulary of images and then use that power to make media work more reflective of the thoughts, concerns and solutions of girls. As girls choose to have deeper involvement with TVbyGIRLS, they become stronger change makers in media making and social action, both understanding the images around them and making new, more authentic images and stories. 

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HISTORY:

TVbyGIRLS is a nonprofit media arts organization that uses the tools of media to work with girls, ages 12 to 19, to develop leadership, critical thinking, collaborative working skills, cross–cultural understanding and social justice awareness.

Created and led by women filmmakers serving as mentors, TVbyGIRLS helps girls from all cultural communities and socio-economic backgrounds to understand how media influences our society and then to use filmmaking to share their own stories in creative projects. Girls work with TVbyGIRLS in progressive steps from short-term workshops (1-3 days) to long-term workshops (6-16 weeks) to participation in our long term mentoring program (several years involvement).

TVbyGIRLS was developed in 2001 (nonprofit status in 2004) by a group of women media professionals with an interest in helping girls to grow as leaders and artists and to use the media arts to engage girls in shaping their world. It was so clear to all of us that media   We have worked with over 800 youth in Minnesota and nationally.  In addition to workshops and media-making trainings, TVbyGIRLS has an intensive mentoring program that works with a group of girls over several years to enhance their leadership experiences and make in-depth film projects.  This program creates a safe, supportive and consistent environment for girls to work collaboratively and explore the issues in their lives while communicating their ideas via media arts. adult mentors partner with the girls. Our cross-cultural mentoring group includes a mix of girls from African American, European American, East Indian, Pakistani, Somali, Jewish American and mixed race backgrounds.

Girls in our programs make films to share with their peers and communities. They have partnered with women over the age of 80 in a project with the Minnesota Historical Society to make films about growing up during the Great Depression and now.  They have created work about body image, peer pressure, war, bullies, teen depression, pressure of living with a disease, questions about love and sexuality, and their own cultural traditions. They have received numerous awards, had screenings across the country, and conducted  presentations and workshops for their peers and adults.

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