While all teens struggle with things such as purpose, confidence and identity, girls’ struggles are often magnified by the considerable cultural pressures placed upon females. By the time a young girl is six, research shows that she has already been socialized to believe that boys have the potential to be smarter than girls. By age seven, she will likely believe she is valued more for her looks than her personality.

In the fall of 2020, women’s ministries in the Canada and Bermuda Territory launched Grow, a new discipleship resource for teen girls designed to help reverse these startling trends. Grow provides opportunities to explore themes of leadership, spiritual formation and social justice through a variety of guided Bible studies, exciting activities and life applications. A life-skills component, featuring topics such as sewing, car care and public speaking, seeks to prepare girls practically as they transition into independence. The Talk About It conversation tool, developed with support from The Salvation Army’s Ethics Centre, provides a framework for girls to discuss topics such as sexuality, media and race in a non-judgmental, faithbased setting. 

While women’s ministries was ready to share Grow with the world, the world was distracted (and rightly so) by the ongoing COVID pandemic, and local uptake was slower than hoped. Internationally, however, Grow was gaining attention, being adopted as an official resource by both the U.S.A. Southern and Central territories, as well as the Caribbean Territory. 

Lt-Colonel Wanda Vincent was the territorial secretary for women’s ministries in the Caribbean Territory at the time and was excited to share this resource with the teen girls there.

“Grow was chosen because it was considered a relevant and user-friendly resource that leaders could easily access and implement,” she recalls. “Each year, portions of the Grow material were inserted in the annual women’s ministry program book (a resource they create every year to provide program ideas for various women’s ministry groups). In this way, the leaders had both hard copy samples as well as all the instructions needed to access Grow online. I felt it was very well received, and the divisional directors of women’s ministries agreed it should remain in the annual resource going forward.”

Closer to home, Captain Susan Roffel found ways of running Grow at Lindsay Community Church, Ont., even during days of masking and social distancing. “As a leader it was great material to get the girls to start a conversation in a non-threatening and non-judgmental way,” she shares. “The topics were relevant and the connection with the young women invaluable.”

One of the girls who attended spoke of her own experience attending Grow: “It was nice talking about real things and finding out about each other. I was able to ask questions without feeling judged.”

The Talk About It conversation guides, which can exist as a standalone resource, were also used by many ministry units running BRAVE, another women’s ministries initiative that seeks to reach out to the most vulnerable girls in our community with a message of empowerment.

RELAUNCHING GROW

With COVID in the rearview mirror, we are relaunching Grow with a new design and two new modules, “Grow Your Emotions” and “Grow Your Creativity,” in the hopes of reaching even more girls.

Captain Emily Newbury plans to introduce Grow at The Salvation Army Rainbow Country Church in Parry Sound, Ont., this fall. “I am planning to use the Grow curriculum with the girls who are aging out of our Tuesday night kid’s club program,” she says. “Grow offers a meaningful and relevant way to stay connected with our preteen and teen girls while empowering them in their faith and identity. It feels like the right next step for continuing relationship and momentum together.”

CAPTAIN LAURA VAN SCHAICK is the corps officer at Barrhaven Church in Ottawa, and the territorial gender equity officer.

GROW REDESIGNED

Think Grow might be a good fit for yourministry unit? The newly redesigned and expanded curriculum is available online, and includes a leader’s guide, training videos, letters for parents and guardians, social posts and more—everything you need to run Grow in your context.

The Grow curriculum can be found at salvationist.ca/grow. Please contact your divisional secretary for women’s ministries for full access