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The catalyst for what would become the Daughters Sisters Project, and eventually the Teen Talking Circle Project, began in 1993 as research for our first book, Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun: Young Women and Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood, (New Society Publishers, 1997). The book, primarily a compilation of stories and interviews by, for, and with young women, was based on the shared experience of 21 girls who participated in a two-year Girls Focus Group (now called Teen Talking Circle).
After the release of the book, we were unexpectedly flooded with emails, phone calls and letters from people who wanted to know if groups like ours existed in their communities, and if not, how to start one. To meet the many requests we received, The Daughters Sisters Project was created in order to develop a non-profit organization devoted to training facilitators and helping teens tell the truth about their lives with peers and adults, and create sustainable relationships.
Since then, through the efforts of many women and men (young and old), we have trained hundreds of people throughout the US and Canada, and continue to run Teen Talking Circles in our own community of Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Now called The Teen Talking Circle Project, DaughtersSisters has become part of a larger organization, a movement that includes circles for young men (BrothersSons), mixed gender circles (GenderTalks), facilitator trainings, and collaborative workshops on compassionate listening, peace building, diversity, and ethical leadership.
The name change reflects our growing commitment to include young men, and support gender reconciliation, based on the realization that personal growth and social change doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes when young women and young men work to understand themselves more deeply (in gender specific circles), and come together (in mixed gender circles) to gain a better understanding of each other, and the way they participate as human beings in the world. This is the heart of our work.
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