Tomorrow night from 7 PM to Midnight is a Valentine’s Day fundraiser for WET, the independent theater company Women’s Expressive Theater. (Click the image for a larger version of the invite!) Actually, the benefit isn’t for the theater group itself; rather your ticket price will go to support a new outreach program for adolescent girls – the WET Risk Taker’s Film Series. According to their web site, this new program is “an educational empowerment program for high school girls with celebrity participants designed to counterbalance the potentially negative influences girls face during high school.”
What does that mean, and why am I shilling for them? Well, I’m dedicating a small sliver of my little nook of the interwebblogosphereverse because it’s a great program, and my girlfriend is one of the mentors involved. Mentor what? Right.
Basically, what they’re doing is screening films for high school sophomore and junior girls, having a guest speaker and then breaking into smaller groups to hold discussions (led by a “mentor”) about the films and some of the issues it contained. To crib more quotes from WET’s site, the program has four objectives:
- To encourage girls to look at film and all media with a critical, intelligent eye.
- To recognize and challenge stereotypes based on gender, race and economics.
- To distinguish between risks that are empowering versus risks that are damaging.
- To inspire the girls, demonstrating by example that achieving one’s dreams is a possibility.
The first event was last month, and it included a screening of The Breakfast Club. The guest speaker was Ally Sheedy. From all reports (er …. i.e., my girlfriend), it went really well. Hopefully, this benefit will help them raise enough money to keep the programming going for a very long time.
Oh yeah … “complimentary cocktails” involving Grey Goose, Dewars and Korbel from 7-9 PM. That’s gotta be worth $11 (or $15 at the door), no?
Out of Focus 