Mar. 4—PLATTSBURGH — Shine On! breaks the mold this weekend by showcasing strong, independent young women in the Building Bravery workshop.

Shine On! is a local organization dedicated to fostering resilience and preventing negative behavioral outcomes that are commonly seen everyday in middle and high school-aged teens by reaching out while they are still in elementary school, according to a press release.

'BE BRAVE, BE BOLD'

Inspiring women such as Laura Dekker, the youngest person to solo-circumnavigate the globe at the age of 14 or Bella the Brave, an 8-year-old fearlessly battling a rare terminal illness, show North Country girls they can Break the Mold.

Inspired by Dekker, this year's theme is "Break the Mold: Be Brave, Be Bold."

"We are hosting the Shine On! Annual conference," Emily Hernandez, a SUNY Plattsburgh Public Relations student and one of the event organizers, said.

"This year, it's called Break the Mold: Be Brave, Be Bold. Of course, we're aiming to teach confidence and individuality," Hernandez said.

"It's inspired by Laura Dekker. She was this girl who, when she was 14 years old, she traveled the world on a sailboat alone. That story is really incredible to us because she was this little girl and she did this great challenge in her life and she finished when she was about 16 years old. That's where the theme "Be Brave, Be Bold" comes from. We're hoping to take that and inspire little girls with that."

OVERNIGHT EVENT

Located in SUNY Plattsburgh's Memorial Hall, 10 workshops will encompass Shine On!'s three main themes: media and marketing literacy, character strengths and upstander communication skills. An upstander is an individual who sees wrongs being committed and acts.

These interactive workshops, led by professional volunteers, will focus on challenging conventional expectations.

Parents will drop off the third to fifth grade girls for the overnight event.

"They get dropped off," Hernandez said.

"Sign-in starts at 8 a.m. They're there all day. The conference doesn't end until Sunday at 12 p.m. Then, the parents come pick them up in the morning. One of the workshops is that we have the girls put on a little talent show for the parents. They come to this and see what progress they have made, and they get to showcase what they've learned at the conference."

BE TRUE TO THEMSELVES

Shine On! aims to build a world populated with more empowered, strong women by starting in Plattsburgh.

It receives support from local sponsors such as The Adirondack Foundation, Cloudsplitter, CVPH and UFirst.

"I think it's really important especially this generation with social media, which can be very toxic and mind-altering," Hernandez said.

"Getting girls at a young age and showing them what true confidence is and showing them to be true to themselves and getting them to just be strong and be able to stick up for themselves and what they believe in. I think getting them really young will eventually mold them to be strong women, so they won't fall into things like peer pressure and to believe what you feel. Although the media is real, but Photoshop and things like that are very prevalent right now. You see these models and we think they're perfect but we know that is not real life. It's not real."

Shine On! has four main components: an annual overnight conference for 200 young girls, an Education Outreach program that has worked in 50+ classrooms this past year throughout the North Country, a Raising Resilient Kids workshop series for parents and guardians to show how to raise strong kids and Shine On-In-a-box, a free program for teachers aligned with NYS Socio-Emotional Learning and ELA standards.

For more information, visit the website at www.shineongirl.org or call Colleen Lemza at 518-570-7898 or Taylor Edgar at 315-955-4248.

Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

Twitter@RobinCaudell