Twenty NYM girls participate in local BIO Girls program

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

The local BIO Girls (Beautiful Inside and Out) group finished up their 12 session program this past week and showcased their finale at the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center to share their artwork completed over the past six weeks.

BIO Girls is a non-profit organization based out of Fargo, N.D., which builds self-confident in adolescent girls through self-empowerment and service to others. The group has a 12 session timeline in which they combine life-skills curriculum with small group mentoring and a space to dedicate to art in an inclusive environment. The local group has been around for four years.

“This year we switched gears from the Yoga BIO Girls and traded it for an art program,” said Site Director Stephanie Von Ruden. “We did yoga for the first three years and it was awesome—we had excellent yoga instructors—but some of the girls who had been doing it all those years had been hoping for a change of pace and last year during our final session, we asked the girls to introduce themselves and all us something that was a strength of theirs and 90 percent of the girls said art.

“So we decided to play to their strengths and some of our mentors strengths and switch to an art-based program,” she continued. “It just piloted last year in Fargo, so we’re only like the second or third program to do art.”

The NY Mills group has 20 girls the their program, which is the most the local program can take, and has a team of mentors including Katie Geiser, Mandy Schik, Michaela Smith, Sarah Carlson and Jessie Johnson. Along with Von Ruden, Hailey Muehler helps as their Marketing Lead and Jillian Bain and Izzy Felix joined as youth mentors. This group is the only art-based BIO Girls in Minnesota.

“It all comes from Fargo,” said Von Ruden of the programming. “They create it all, they create the dialogue for the sessions, they choose the art programs to go with each session. They even send us all the supplies we need.

“Every session starts off with a devotional piece,” she continued. “You can choose to have that piece or not, but we decided to keep it in. So we’ll go through a scripture of the Bible an how we can put that into play in our everyday life. Then we move on to another large group portion where we can drill down on the mantra a little bit.”

One mantra example was a session where they discussed how they could “spread kindness like confetti” and discussed the ways in which they could take steps in the families, friend groups, and communities to spread kindness. After the large group session, they moved into their small groups and talk more in-depth about how they can personalize the message and create an individual plan for utilizing those skills in their own lives. To finish out the session, the girls work on 30-45 minutes of art programming.

“My favorite part is, now that my daughter is old enough to be in the program,” said Von Ruden, “When she’s having any friendship problems or anything like that, it’s really awesome to take some of the lessons that we’ve learned and to be able to utilize that when we’re working through the hard times, or exciting times.

“And connecting with the girls is always awesome,” she continued. “I love being able to go to the school and all the girls come and give you a big hug and they’re happy to see you. But definitely connecting with my daughter is the highlight of it all.”

Those interested in joining BIO Girls next year are encouraged to follow their Facebook page and watch for materials sent home from school with information and instructions on how to register.