Global Girls Hosts Dreams Become Reality Summer Program For Local Youth

Throughout the summer, Global Girls, a nonprofit performance art organization, will offer Chicago’s youth the opportunity to create and perform their own performance art that depicts their personal experiences and dreams. Photo Credit: Global Girls
Throughout the summer, Global Girls, a nonprofit performance art organization, will offer Chicago’s youth the opportunity to create and perform their own performance art that depicts their personal experiences and dreams. Photo Credit: Global Girls

Global Girls Hosts Dreams Become Reality Summer Program For Local Youth

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

Global Girls, a nonprofit performing arts organization, is hosting the Dreams Become Reality summer program for local youth. The program will allow participants to create performance art that represents their lived experiences and their dreams for the future and perform their pieces during the Dreams Become Reality Showcase later this summer.

Global Girls is a 19-year-old organization that encourages young people to pursue their dreams while exposing them to performance art, travel, and social-emotional learning opportunities.

“I started this organization 19 years ago but I feel like I’ve been doing Global Girls my whole life,” said Marvinetta Woodley-Penn, founder and executive director of Global Girls. “We take issues that young people might be going through and we turn them into performance pieces. We help young people dream and we help them step outside of their comfort zones, get on stage, and just realize all the potential and all the skills that they have. We teach them to dream and to work hard to make those dreams come true.”

The Global Girls Studio, 8151 S. South Chicago Ave., is a place where young people between the ages of 4 and 14 can come after school and during the summer to participate in dancing, acting, and singing lessons along with receiving social and emotional skill development.

“We take anyone and everyone,” said Woodley-Penn “The difference with our program is that we teach social-emotional skills also. We teach mindfulness, we teach basic etiquette, we teach young people how to greet one another, and we teach them how to control their self-talk. We teach them a lot more than just performing arts, we teach them how to be well-rounded people.”

Global Girls is a recipient of the Safe and Peaceful Communities Fund summer grant program. The grant that Global Girls received will be used to fund their Dreams Become Reality summer program.

“This grant gives us another opportunity to change mindsets. I want to reach young people before they start thinking about alternatives and violence and before they become influenced,” said Woodley-Penn. “We are asking young people from the beginning, what their dreams are and I hear a lot of young people say none, they don’t know how to dream and they have never been asked that question before.”

All the participants in the Dreams Become Reality program will be asked to create a performance piece which can be done as a solo or group performance and can take the form of spoken word, monologues, skits, songs, dance, or a combination of more than one performance style.

At the end of the program, everyone will present their performances at the Dreams Become Reality showcase which will be open to the community.

To learn more about Global Girls, call 773-902-2359 or visit www.globalgirlsinc.org.

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