PROGRAMS  |  BLACK CHURCH INITIATIVE | "GENERATION TO GENERATION"

Generation to Generation
Educational Workshop

Stay on Your Grind
Background/Rationale: Teenage girls often have difficulty understanding the reality of peer pressure. Typically, they are familiar with the concept, but unsure of the realistic often subtle ways that it occurs in their everyday lives. In Voices of a Generation: Teenage Girls on Sex, School, and Self, a 1999 report concluded from summits sponsored nationwide by the American Association of University Women, African-American girls reported that they saw teen pregnancy as a choice while white girls saw it as a accident. That kind of peer norm creates a subtle form of peer pressure. A majority of all the girls in the study said they are forced to grow up too fast as they face an environment filled with drugs, violence, sex, and pregnancy. Many of the girls cited incidents of boys as young as 12 or 13 calling girls "bitches," "sluts," and "whores" or making crude requests for sex.

This activity encourages girls, in the hip hop vernacular, “to stay on their grind.” This means “stick with their game plan” or “stay on their job.” With respect to teen pregnancy, staying on their grind includes avoiding situations that encourage behavior they may later regret. Initially, the girls identify the real and often subtle ways that they confront negative peer pressure in their daily lives and then they develop skills to combat these pressures.

For the complete Stay on Your Grind educational workshop, e-mail or call 202-628-7700 x24.

For more information on the National Black Church Initiative and Generation to Generation, please call 202-628-7700 or email g2ginfo@rcrc.org.