RBR Girls' Latina Group Creates Video for UN International Day of the Girl

The second annual United Nations' International Day of the Girl is coming up; and, Red Bank Regional High School is doing its part to emulate this year's Innovating for Girls' Education theme with a video created by the school's Latina Girls' Group.

The Day of the Girl Summit is sponsored by more than 50 organizations, including UNICEF and UN Women.

With the video, featured on YouTube (above), RBR's group speaks up with its own message designed to empower women to improve their lives through education, according to an RBR release. Thousands of others spread the message in their own unique ways.

“The (RBR Latina Girls') group is a safe place to come and talk about relationships, and family issues," Latina Girls' Group member Cynthia Gaspar said. "And even though we are from many different places, like Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, El Salvador, Chile etc, we find that we have the same interests and goals.”

One of those goals for the group is championing and attaining higher education goals, correlating with the Day of the Girl theme.

The RBR girls have participated in a similar Brookdale summit for teenagers and support efforts to create scholarship opportunities to make higher education possible for their members, the release said. The ties in the group also involve intercultural and emotional commonalities that advance empowerment.

“I explained that our group is about empowering women, that we are together and really trust each other,” said RBR junior Jennifer Gonzalez, who was interviewed by the NGO Working Group on Girls, a partner supporting the Day of the Girl Summit.

RBR Academy of International and Cultural Studies (AICS) lead teacher Rose Powers, who works with the group as a volunteer, submitted their application to the Working Group on Girls.

“I think it is great and so important that we all get to say what we feel and give each other advice," said group member Jasmin Garcia. "We are all one happy family. If someone cries, we all cry.”

Source clinician Marisol Mondaca advises both high school and Red Bank Middle School groups. She believes the popularity of the Girls’ Latina group relates to the unique place these girls occupy between two cultures — that of their heritage and their American home, the release said.

“We are always encouraging the girls to become independent, to go on to college and live independently, while their immigrant families may prefer they pursue a more traditional extended family life. So we are helping them together to find a balance among these two worlds,” Mondaca said in the release. “But you see they are hoping to go to college and they have big dreams.”
      
Here are some examples of those dreams and the girls' plans for attaining them:

Gonzales, an AICS student, wants to be a reporter for Latinos Unidos, the Spanish language Greater Media newspaper in Monmouth County. Her plan is to eventually work for Telemundo, the Spanish television network in America.

Karla Williams, who spends part of her school day at the county vocation program for dental assistants, plans to parley those credits to Rutgers University in her quest to become a doctor.

Jasmine Garcia, who is in RBR’s Early Child Development program, hopes to become a bilingual preschool teacher.  


The RBR Latina Group was founded six years ago through the school’s School Based Youth Services Program, the Source, to help Latina girls successfully transition from middle school to high school.