ElderChicks

My friend Marylen Oberman and I are volunteer mentors of teenage girls at a middle school in Florida. These are girls who have lots of anxiety in their lives, very little privilege –and more school “issues” than most. It’s not that they think their lives are tougher than other kids’ lives. It’s that they don’t often know another way that life can be.

The girls sought us out. Mentors were offered to them by a psychologist at the school, during school time, in a one-on-one situation. We are not there to tutor, nag, or judge their behavior. We are not there to tell them to go to school, do their homework, and play nice. We are there to be trusted, stable adults in their often chaotic and incomprehensible lives. So what do you talk about with an African-American teenager when you are a white grandmother wintering comfortably in Florida?

We believed we needed to focus on something external and non-threatening. We decided to teach them to knit. And did they ever learn fast! Marylen chats in one place with her mentee and I meet somewhere else in the school with mine. The time we spend with them is private. While we sit and knit, we talk to them about ourselves: things that are of concern to us, things that we do, our own grandchildren’s anxieties and how that affects us. What we find is that as we open ourselves to them, giving them the respect and dignity they deserve as human beings, they also open up to us. I think they like to be with us! On the appointed days, we find them waiting for us, knitting in hand, before we arrive. And –for a bonus– they always seem to attend school on the days they are expecting us.  Here is a picture of  Marylen with  her mentee.

Here is where the dots come in:

Dot # 1: Longboat Key, FL We hear about a project called Care Squares: Empowering Women One Stitch at a Time. Its purpose is to present afghans to women as they leave Hannah House, a halfway house in Philadelphia, in which formerly incarcerated women gain the skills they need to re-enter society.

Dot #2:  Villanova, PA We contact Margie Rosenberg, who started the project and she sends several kits of yarn, needles, stitch counters, instructions, and a beautiful letter explaining the scope  and purpose of the project. We are greatly impressed with her project and the professional way in which the materials are distributed.

Dot #3: Sarasota, FL We show the materials to the counselor at the school where we volunteer and ask to start an after school knitting club in which we take on the Care Squares project.  Our young knitters are excited about making the afghan and stay after school to knit squares. Although our mentees are excited about the project, the club gets off to a slow start.  Are the other kids a little suspicious?? Who are those women with the gray hair?? They don’t know yet that we are ElderChicks!  Upbeat, involved, and interested in their world. One day a boy stops us in school and asks if he can learn to knit. Other kids stop by and show lots of interest. None of the girls think it is strange for a boy to be knitting. Isn’t it great that gender stereotypes are changing? Below is a picture of me teaching my grandson Yonatan to knit when he was 15.

Dot #4: Philadelphia, PA The afghan is halfway done now and, with the help of other women who have offered to make squares, it will be completed by the end of April. The girls in the club are arranging the squares in a pattern of their design and they will help sew them together.

The After School Knitting Club is underway, now,  and we’ll have a track record with the kids when we start it up again next fall. Our big payoff for this project is the kids and their attitudes. They love the idea that they are doing something for women who are in need of support and have decided to send notes and pictures with the finished afghan. Their thinking and their reach is now going beyond this activity. They have suggested additional projects they would like to do for others. They’ve  learned what the word empowerment means. They want to spend more than the allotted time at knitting and they scold us for not being able to continue with them when we snowbirds fly north in May.

One more word about one-on-one mentoring vs. the After School Knitting Club:  When we talk with the girls one-on-one, the conversations are intimate and personal and, we hope, fulfill one kind of need. In the club, their public personas take over. Their chatter and sometimes silly noises are for public notice and to attract attention but they seem to enjoy the sense of accomplishment in school that doesn’t come their way very often. From this whole experience, we feel we have gained as  much as we have given. We’ll be sorry to say good-bye in April and look forward to next year.  [Leave a comment here.]

If you are interested in learning more about Care Squares: Empowering Women One Stitch at a Time www.CareSquaresCommunity.org. Margie Rosenberg can be reached by email at info@CareSquaresCommunity.