What is “girl-fueled, intergenerational, feminist activism?”
Intergenerational feminist activism is “girlfueled” when girls identify injustices and problems they want to fix and adults offer girls what they need to explore and fix them. Adults and girls work as partners, but girls take the lead.
What is SPARK Movement?
SPARK Movement is an intergenerational activist coalition of people and partner organizations working to ignite a girl-fueled antiracist gender justice movement. We’re a place you can find other activists, resources, and information all designed to support an online and on-the- ground global young feminist movement.
Is this the same SPARK Movement that challenged Seventeen, LEGO, and Google?
Yes. SPARK began with an October 2010 kickoff summit and immediately launched a series of successful intergenerational girl-fueled campaigns.
- We called out LEGO for perpetuating stereotypes about girls’ potential in their Friends line. We were invited to meet with their marketing and design team and we presented them with a full “gender audit” of their company and offered ideas for how they could improve. One year later, LEGO launched a new line of female scientists.
- Our campaign demanding Seventeen Magazine publish “un-Photoshopped” photos of girls and commit to body size and racial diversity led the magazine to publish a “Body Peace Treaty” promising just that.
- After our research revealed shocking gender and race imbalance in Google’s homepage “Doodles,” Google publicly committed to work toward diversity. They invited us to partner with their team to create and launch a cellphone app to map women’s history globally.
We’ve also run campaigns that challenge racism and sexism in the media, push for sexual violence prevention, and protest sizism in the clothing industry, racism in the beauty industry, and sexualized toys and products aimed at girls.
How has SPARK changed? And why?
We’ve worked closely with a SPARKteam of 65 girls from throughout the US and a dozen countries, and we’ve learned a ton. We realized the best way to ensure our movement’s success is to share this knowledge and the resources we’ve developed and work with our friends to get the word out. Activism requires coalition and we’ve built a great one. Together we’re mobilizing girl activists online, providing anti-racist feminist trainings and resources, offering creative arts-based activist strategies, and developing a steady stream of girl-fueled activist research to guide us.
Tell me more about this new coalition of partners and how you work together?
SPARK is now de-centralized into partner organizations with the deep skills and resources to advance our primary projects.
A little more detail about your partners and these initiatives, please?
- SPARKaction: SPARK has always been, first and foremost about girl-fueled activism. About-Face, a girl-fueled media activism site, oversees the SPARK Action Squad (SAS), a diverse girl-led squad of over 400 young activists (and growing) engaged in both local and global action campaigns, conversations, and projects aimed at combatting gender injustice.
- SPARKresearch: From the beginning, SPARK has depended on current research to inform and guide our actions. Each successful campaign has required us to “do our homework” to be sure what we think is a problem is really a problem. Then we use that research to figure out creative solutions. The SexGenLab@CUNY keeps us up-to- date on the latest research and develops action projects grounded in girls’ questions and experiences.
- SPARKtraining: Girl expertise has always guided the development of SPARK’s approach to training. We’re developing curricular activities, toolkits, activism workshops, videos, and presentations you can access for free to support your actions. And we’re available to help you get your intergenerational activist campaigns off the ground!
- SPARKtheater: We love the power of girl-written and performed theater projects. We have produced an original global girl-written play for the UN, a soundwalk audio play about rape culture, and four other original plays. viBe Theater Experience, a girls’ performing arts organization that produces original theater with girls of color in New York City, will create, produce and facilitate an annual SPARK activist performance event.
How can SPARK support my activist work with girls?
- SPARKresearch: SexGenLab@CUNY (Deborah Tolman)
- SPARKtraining: SPARK Movement (Dana Edell & Lyn Mikel Brown)
- SPARKtheater: viBe Theater Experience (Toya Lillard)
- SPARKaction: About-Face (Jennifer Berger)
Check out “for adults” under SPARKtraining to find a rich array of resources, tools, and wisdom from other adults who have been doing intergenerational activist work with girls. Feel free to contact us to arrange a training, set up an online consultation, or invite us to speak to your group. We have a series of trainings to meet the needs of those just beginning this work and for those who want to hone their already considerable skills.