Virginia Episcopalian Magazine Spring 2013 Issue | Page 18

Launching Leaders:

.I.R.L.s
G
Take on the U.N.

Grace Schwartz

Becca Bryant

Maddie Stroud

Emily Cherry

Hannah Cannon

Kenna Dickard

Photo: Sheryl Stroud Bryant

For our sisters who have lost

For victims of rape, human

For the women whose living

their sense of self amid the

trafficking, genital mutilation,

situations demand a daily

chaos of life, materialism and

and all other forms of violence

struggle for survival.

harmful relationships.

against women.

So prayed five young women from St. George’s,
Fredericksburg when they traveled to New York in early
March to take part in the United Nations Commission on
the Status of Women with the Working Group on Girls. In
addition to leading the prayers at a special Eucharist at the
Episcopal Church Center, Becca Bryant, Hannah Cannon,
Kenna Dickard, Grace Schwartz, Maddie Stroud and their
mothers and group leaders spent several days in lectures,
conversations and workshops discussing the week’s theme
of stopping violence against women and girls.

The New York trip had its origins in the Rev. Deacon
Carey Chirico’s 2012 trip to the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, designated by the United Nations as the most
dangerous place on earth to be a woman. “As I returned to
life in Virginia, the best way I knew to honor the women of
the Congo was to begin with our own young ones, our next
global and church leaders,” Chirico wrote in a reflection. And
so Girls in Real Life (G.I.R.L.s) was born.

The G.I.R.L.s group spent five months prior to the trip
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Virginia Episcopalian / Spring 2013

delving into different learning and discussion modules.
They took part in their own microfinance project, had
conversations about sexual violence as a weapon of control,
and talked about the empowerment of an education, all in
the greater context of their faith. The conversations had an
added importance because they took place not only between
peers, but also between mothers and daughters. “You do see
a different dimension in them” as a result of the discussions,
explained Sheryl Stroud Bryant, a mother and group leader.
“The ability to have an adult conversation about adult
topics … and share that intense, adult perspective has done
something for our relationship,” added Nancy Schwartz,
another mother and group leader.

The group also had an opportunity to meet with the
Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of
the Episcopal Church, when she came to visit St. George’s
in February. “She really made us think,” explained Grace, by
questioning how they would make a difference in their own
communities on these women’s issues.