PEARLS COMING EVENTS

JOURNAL SENTINEL EDITORIAL ON PEARLS
Feb 22, 2008


VIOLENCE PREVENTION
MARCH & RALLY
November 2007

Editorial: A program that's all about building strong girls
A cocoon in which the skills of adulthood grow may also hold key to reducing teen pregnancy

Article from the Journal Sentinel

By O. RICARDO PIMENTEL
rpimentel@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Feb. 22, 2008

"We're sisters."

The topic was growing strong girls - girls strong enough to navigate their way through the choppy waters of the teen years.

Girls strong enough to save Milwaukee.

So, in reality, the topic was teen pregnancy, which informed community leaders have long identified as being as much cause as effect when Milwaukee's poverty and attendant problems are discussed.

The "sisters" remark came from Shakayla Nelson, 17, part of a group of teen girls participating in the Pearls for Teen Girls Program. The girls, high school juniors and seniors, were talking about the skills necessary for a teenager to grow into a successful adult.

Sisterhood, Nelson and the others seemed to be saying, is a cocoon that allows these skills to develop. And the Pearls program, they said, is providing that cocoon.

Milwaukee needs many tools to overcome the city's teen pregnancy problem, and Pearls for Teen Girls is one of them. Pearls helps build girls strong enough to withstand the intense pressures to have sex and risk pregnancy.

Elsewhere in Crossroads today is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board's explanation for why tackling this problem must be a priority in the region and the city - and a prescription for what the community must do.

These girls describe the task ahead.

Babies as accessories
These Pearls girls all seemed to have their heads on straight. They all intend on college and spoke with confidence about their own abilities to withstand the pressures to indulge in risky behaviors. But, they also made clear that they are no strangers to these pressures and that they see the negative outcomes played out virtually every day in the environment around them.

At their schools and in their neighborhoods, having a baby is simply no big deal, they said. It is often viewed as "cute." Acceptance, in other words, of what should be a rare circumstance - but isn't in some of Milwaukee's schools and neighborhoods.

"It's now encouraged to be pregnant. . . . Oh, that's cute," Nichelle Montiel, 18, said her classmates often say when a girl at school becomes pregnant. "It shouldn't be that welcome."

The Pearls girls spoke of babies who are thought of as dolls or accessories. That's at first - until the full implications of parenthood too early sinks in and the father is either disavowing fatherhood or not in a position to care for a family.

The girls were not saying that moral coercion ought to be employed - the experts say using shame as a bludgeon doesn't work. They were saying that there is something wrong when a teenage girl having a baby out of wedlock is viewed as normal.

Boys, too, feel peer pressure. They aren't men if they're not having sex. And the girls consent because things are missing in their lives.

It's often self-esteem that is missing, said Danae Davis, executive director of the program, which has existed for 14 years but only became an incorporated nonprofit in 2000. Davis, also a member of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, became the program's chief in 2006.

The program is open to girls 11 through 18. Once a week, they are brought together and schooled in sisterhood, which might be defined as learning from each other and from other mentors not much older than they are. They learn what "makes a girl make a decision against her interests" and then how to thwart those bad decisions by drawing on inner skills and the support of those around them.

Self esteem gives the girl the ability to say no and to see through her own fervent desires to believe what a boy is telling her, she said.

Seeking 'straight talk'
Pearls is not a teen pregnancy prevention program per se. But that seems to be one of the outcomes.

Davis said 99% of the girls in the program in 2006 and 2007, periods of expansion, didn't get pregnant. That accomplishment is magnified when you learn that the program's participants come from schools and neighborhoods that contribute many of the births to teen mothers in Milwaukee, which leads the state in that category.

"Straight talk" is what Davis said the Pearls girls are seeking. On Tuesday, in their weekly meeting at the YMCA Holton Youth Center on Burleigh St., it was what they were dishing out.

"If you set goals, you have something to look forward to, something to strive for," said Christina Jackson, 18.

Or, as Desiree LeFlore, 17, put it, "I want to get where I'm going before I think about that (parenthood)."

Often - an observation supported by the statistics - girls get pregnant because their mothers had them as teenagers, Nelson said.

"They don't have positive role models in their lives and say, 'I'm going to go my own way,' " she said. This often means living their lives through boyfriends and their wishes and desires.

Education is the key to preventing teen pregnancy, both experts and the Pearls girls said.

And education, the girls said, means not just learning where babies come from but how, in addition to abstinence, to prevent those babies from being born to girls who make mistakes.

"They're not aware of contraceptives," Montiel said.

By and large, the girls said, they haven't gotten that kind of education in their schools.

In Pearls for Teen Girls, the girls learn to lead by example.

"I want to be a role model for people," said Lekeisha Sherrod, 17. "I don't want to be a statistic in any bad way."

Though the girls spoke of external forces, there was general acknowledgment that, ultimately, the girls themselves are responsible for their futures.

Hence their appreciation for a program that teaches them the skills, often just to say "no."

"People make their own decisions," said Jackson.

If they had imaginary magic wands to fix the problem, they'd offer solutions that adults often mention.

Things to do in their own neighborhoods. More community centers. Movie theaters and skating rinks where they are not made to feel unwelcome. Fixing poverty. Broad health education that teaches more than just how babies are made. A change in peer culture. A culture and a media that don't emphasize sex at every turn. Engaged parents and functioning families. A community that cares enough to work at achieving these.

But it comes down to something like Nelson's "sisterhood" solution. Not just sisterhood, however, but familyhood - the notion that the girls most at risk for teen pregnancy must be viewed as part of everyone's family in the region.

They are our children. And they shouldn't be having children themselves.

This special report was reported and written for the Editorial Board by O. Ricardo Pimentel, who is editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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