“In fully accepting your creative power, you honor and respect your soul and remind others to do the same.” ~Sonia Choquette

Creative drive, empowerment and advocacy is clearly emanated through the souls of many women. But in recent years, we’ve seen a decline in these attributes among today’s youth and The Girl’s Guide to Swagger is on a mission to make sure we don’t continue down this path. When those strengths are not drawn upon, women as a whole lose out. Fortunately, we all can nurture each other so that this doesn’t happen.  Ashley Marinaccio shows us how we can as she works to cultivate these important attributes through the girls and women involved in Girl Be Heard, a theater collective that uses acting to empower young women ages 12 through 21 to become brave, confident, socially conscious leaders while exploring their own lives.

Performers from Girl Be Heard

Girl Be Heard was founded four years ago by Marinaccio, who is the now Artistic Director. She is an activist and artist and her work has been seen in many venues across the country such as global TED conferences, The White House, United Nations, and on tour across the United States. She holds a M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Bachelor’s of the Arts in theatre directing and sociology/anthropology with minors in women/gender and Middle Eastern from Pace University.Marinaccio’s enjoys utilizing theatre for peace building, healing, and empowerment and her vast background led her to be the most suitable person to begin this organization back at the Estrogenius Theatre Festival  in 2008, where she was asked to write a play for teenage girls performing at the festival. But instead, she changed things up a bit by having the girls write and act out the plays themselves.“It was apparent that I should not be writing this for them (the plays girls were performing). They needed to be empowered to write it themselves. So we had each of the girls get into discussions.

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Ruby Taylor believes that each of us is priceless. She has suffered watching her nieces and the girls she counsels in her job as a school social worker struggle with low self-esteem and doubt about their worth. Rather than simply feeling bad, Ruby is the kind of person who does something – something big!  In addition to her Priceless Project reaching out to teen-age girls, she has published a book Confidence to Greatness. The book is full of stories from women and one man about how each one has overcome obstacles or mistakes to make a successful life.

Ruby’s latest effort provides resources and support for parents, aunts, teachers and others who have teen-age girls in their lives. In addition to advice, the new site Uplift Girls will be a place to recognize special teen-age girls in your life as priceless princesses.

Take a look at the new website at  http://upliftgirls.com/ to see how you can get involved.  You’ll be inspired by how much difference one person can make when she takes action to change the world.