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Cook County hearings on October 21!

As a result of advocacy by the Taskforce, the Cook County Commission on Women's Issues is hosting its 2010 Public Hearing on Women & Girls: Sex & Sexuality - Health & Harms. Several Taskforce members will be testifying, including:

• Melissa Spatz, who will be speaking about the unique ways that girls experience violence, and the need for girl-specific responses within multiple systems
• Mariame Kaba, who will be speaking about issues impacting young women in juvenile detention
• Claudia Garcia-Rojas, who will be sharing her initial findings from research at the Cook County Bureau of Health Services

The hearings are open to the public; here are the details:

Thursday, October 21, 2010
9 am - 12:30 pm
George W. Dunne Cook County Administration Building
69 W Washington Street, 17th floor conference room
Chicago, IL 60602

Girl/Friends summer institute featured on WBEZ

The Girl/Friends Summer Institute is one of the 3 projects we'll be featuring in our Occasional Papers series this fall. Check out this great coverage of their work on Chicago Public Radio!

http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=43458

Roundtable on July 21

Our next Roundtable, on Reproductive Justice & Violence Against Girls, will take place on Wednesday, July 21, at 5 pm. For details, and a copy of the background paper for the discussion, please email us at chitaskforce@gmail.com.

New data shows dating violence in Chicago on the rise

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

First set of Occasional Papers selected - congrats to the authors!

The Taskforce is going to be disseminating Occasional Papers to point to successful strategies to ending violence against girls. We want to know what works, and what new approaches are underway.

A big congratulations to the first round of authors, whose papers will be disseminated in November:

* Scheherazade Tillet & Salamishah Tillet, A Long Walk Home: Girl / Friends Summer Institute
* Brenda Arsenault,The Sooner the Better: The Impact of Early Exposure to Abuse Prevention on High School Sexual Assault Education
* Young Women's Empowerment Project, The Bad Encounter Line

Tell us about schools that are promoting safe learning environments!

According to the 2007 YRBS, as reported in the Status of Girls in Illinois report, more than 1 in 10 girls in Chicago has skipped school because they felt unsafe. The Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women is developing recommendations on how to make Chicago's schools safer for girls.

One factor we know is important is the culture of the school. Schools can be safe and respectful learning environments that help young people to thrive, or they can be cold, punitive environments. It is crucial that our schools develop a culture of safety and respect.

We want to hear from you about positive examples! Can you tell us about a school that is promoting a positive environment for students?

Next Roundtable, May 19

Our next Roundtable will focus on violence against girls in school settings. We will be meeting on May 19 at 5 pm.

This is an area where there is a lot of campaign work underway, and we'll be hearing from folks around those campaigns, including:

-- the Shriver Center's work around ESSA legislation
-- the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance's anti-bullying legislation
-- the Safe & Affirming Education campaign led by Gender JUST

We'll talk about the school to prison pipeline as it affects girls, and the role of violence. And we'll think about what else needs to change to make schools safe places for girls to thrive.

For details, and to receive a copy of the background paper for this session, just email us at chitaskforce@gmail.com

Survey on violence against girls in school settings

On May 19, the Taskforce will be holding a Roundtable discussion on the school system & violence against girls. As always, we are preparing a background paper on the issue, and Chicagoans... we want to hear from you!

Please fill out the following brief survey by April 30, to tell us about the experiences and needs of girls and young women, the projects and organizations that are working on the issue, and the work that remains to be done.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N3S685S

The Taskforce brings adults and youth together to address these issues, and having a youth voice is central to our work. So if you work with young people, please encourage them to fill out the survey as well - we want to hear from youth about the experiences that they are having and their ideas for change!

Ways to get involved in the Taskforce

How can YOU contribute to the Chicago Taskforce on Violence

against Girls and Young Women?

1. Monitor the media for stories about violence against girls and young women in Chicago and Illinois. Collect the stories and conduct an analysis of them that can be included in the 2010 taskforce briefing book. The analysis must be submitted to the Taskforce by September 15^th 2010.

2. Develop a series of guidelines for how the media should cover stories about violence against girls and young women. This will be included on the taskforce website.

3. Create a 2-hour workshop about media advocacy tailored for practitioners and community members who are addressing issues of violence against women and girls.

4. Develop and design the Taskforce website.

5. Volunteer to maintain and update the Taskforce website on bi-weekly basis.

6. Submit a paper to the occasional paper series. Remember, the deadline is March 31! Info is available on this site.

7. Submit any relevant information to the Taskforce newsletter (good resources, upcoming events, key information about issues of violence against girls and young women).

8. Submit anti-violence against girls and young women curriculum units that can be used by organizations and people across Chicago. The taskforce will create a curriculum guide which will be available for downloading from the website.

9. Volunteer for short term research opportunities to contribute to the development of briefing papers based on a roundtable discussions.

10. Make a financial contribution (of any amount) to the Taskforce to cover costs including food, supplies, printing, and web hosting. Please make checks payable to the Chicago Freedom School (our fiscal sponsor) and send to 719 S. State Street # 3N, Chicago, IL 60605. Or donate through facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/causes/449806

For more information or to volunteer, please contact us at chitaskforce@gmail.com

Violence & Incarceration Roundtable

Please mark your calendar for our next Roundtable, on incarceration and violence against young women. We welcome adults and young women from organizations across Chicago.

We'll be meeting on March 31 at 5 pm at the Chicago Freedom School, 719 S State Street, suite 3N.

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to Melissa at chitaskforce@gmail.com to receive a copy of the background paper for this discussion!

Call for Submissions: Occasional Papers Series

The Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women is pleased to announce a call for contributions to its Occasional Papers series.

We welcome submissions from practitioners, community members, and like-minded allies in academia, and invite you to join us in "translating" knowledge about girls and violence to the general public. In launching the Occasional Papers series about Girls and Violence, we seek to offer relevant, practical, and useful information to the general public about the realities and impact of violence in the lives of young women and girls, innovative programming and approaches, and concrete tools that communities can use to end violence.

We also welcome submissions from girls and young women themselves who want to write about the realities of their lived experiences of violence. The Taskforce defines girls as those under 18 years old and young women as between 18 and 24 years old.

The Taskforce is seeking contributions of case studies, work in progress research papers, special reports, conference reports, and curriculum units on issues of violence against girls and young women. All writings are intended to be useful to those in the field.

We are particularly interested in soliciting work from Chicago practitioners who are engaged in direct service provision and/or grassroots organizing around issues of violence against girls and young women. We want to know about new approaches - what new models are you applying? What has worked and what challenges have you faced?

Violence against girls and young women is pervasive, complex, and cumulative. Individual organizations and individual community members cannot tackle this issue on their own. The Chicago Taskforce on Girls, Young Women and Violence has been founded to serve as a vehicle for addressing the following question: What are the conditions that need to exist locally and statewide to end violence against girls and young women? One of the most important goals of the Taskforce is to reassert community control over the production, documentation, ownership and use of our own information and experiences.

ABSTRACTS WILL BE DUE BY MARCH 31, 2010. Publishing decisions will be made by May 20 by a team of reviewers, for publication in fall 2010. We will work with authors, and respond with comments on submissions. Authors will have an opportunity to review and approve suggested edits. Please note that there will be no compensation for submissions.

Submission Guidelines

· Submission should include: the title of the submission, the author(s) names, an abstract of 250 words, and a brief biographical sketch, with affiliations, telephone and e-mail address.

· Language should be accessible to a broad audience including young people.

Please use Times New Roman 12 point font, and leave 1-inch margins all around.

· Please submit as a word document (.doc, not .docx) or as a PDF file

· Please send your submission to us electronically at chitaskforce@gmail.com.

Inquiries about the Taskforce's Occasional Papers Series or other related questions may be directed to Melissa Spatz at chitaskforce@gmail.com.