September 25, 2024

GirlRise Mentoring Session held at St. John Baptist Church

Topic: Cultural Exchange Event and Passport Creations

Dr. Sheffield provided artifacts from around the world to share and allow the girls to try on garments and headpieces. Artifacts from Italy, Dubai, Spain, London, France, South Africa, and Washington, DC. The girls had the opportunity to create their personalized paper passports. Dr. Sheffield explained how to complete a passport and showed them two original passports as examples. They were given the option to choose travel location stickers to place in their passport. She explained how our culture differed from South Africa. An example was based on the cafeteria food children eat. In one village in South Africa, the children eat porridge for lunch. The girls responded with the types of foods they eat, such as hamburgers, quesadillas, etc. Dr. Sheffield shared her experience with eating a traditional African meal which consisted of cow heel, cabbages, chicken, and pap. They were thrilled to see and handle the different currencies from a a few of the places. They were also amazed to know that my braids cost me only $28.94 which was R500. They drank English Breakfast Tea from London as they created their passports. A PowerPoint presentation was shared with images from Sheffield’s travel to expose them to different walks of life. She explained to the girls just how good they have it in America versus other countries. She did a comparison to the size of beds that they sleep in versus Nelson Mandela's bed at his house and shared pictures from his jail cell at Robben Island. It was a learning experience for all in attendance, even the adults.

Reflection Activity:

• Three concepts that they enjoyed from this year
• Two things they learned about themselves 
• One message for Dr. Erica 

They were crowned with tiaras and personal were remarks given.