Club Être Stars & Stripes: For Girls Whose Parents Are Serving on Veteran’s Day, We Have the Chance to Serve Them
With Veteran’s Day coming up this week, our heads turn to honoring those who have served our country to secure and preserve peace. And with 16.2M veterans in the United States as of last year, representing 6.2% of the total civilian population aged 18 and over, our gratitude extends far and wide.
It extends, in fact, to the families of these veterans and, in my case, to the children. In addition to missing their parents during deployments and experiencing the trauma of a wounded or deceased parent, military kids face challenges unique to their circumstances and often hard for the rest of us to understand.
According to the Department of Defense, “[m]ilitary families move every two to three years on average, and military children change schools an average of six to nine times from the start of kindergarten to their high school graduation. This year,” their website adds, “an estimated 30 percent of military service members will move to a new installation.”
That’s a lot for a kid, and it makes it hard to find friends, forming and growing socialized peer bonds that can help face the hardship of having a parent in active duty.
This is why I am so pleased to announce a new Club Être chapter launching this month, designed specifically for girls and those who identify with girlhood in military families.
Meet Club Être Stars & Stripes.
Replicating the model we established last year for homeschooled girls, Club Être Stars & Stripes will operate virtually only, connecting girls across different military bases and offering an extracurricular club experience hard to get when girls are switching schools so often.
Because the new kid – who has always felt like the new kid because she’s moved seven times - needs a core group of friends.
And that group of friends needs an epic set of mentors.
Want to zoom with an astronaut, a news anchor or an Olympic athlete? Feel like you need the advice of a founder, fashion icon or movie producer? All you need to unpack is your laptop – Être mentors already see you.
“As a military spouse of 15 years and a mother to military children for the past 12 years, I can confidently attest to the significance of connection in their lives. Just like other children, they yearn for a sense of community. At on-post schools, their friends frequently relocate. Off-post schools may not provide them with peers who can relate to their unique lifestyle. Virtual clubs ensure that kids like mine maintain a continuous connection with their peers, regardless of the constant changes in their world.”
Clubs are important, particularly as girls move from middle to high school. The Princeton Review notes that “participation in clubs can hone your communication skills, foster creative thinking, and teach you how to work effectively with other people.” They go on to advise students that “[b]ecause extracurriculars can take a lot of time—and because your time in high school is precious—you’ll want to be strategic about which clubs to join.”
How to choose what clubs to join? The Princeton Review offers eleven smart tips for choosing the right clubs – three, in particular, stood out to me, especially for high schoolers eyeing college applications:
Choose quality over quantity. One club may be all you need. No need to over-curricular your extracurriculars. Even if you don’t move a lot, you can’t join everything. Surveying your club options is smart to do each year, and then join those that truly resonate with you. Less can be more here. “Think about what really piques your interest,” they advise,” and pursue just a few things.”
Try to gain professional experience. “Finding an internship or job that aids in professional development during high school is tough,” acknowledges The Princeton Review, but “clubs can provide valuable professional development opportunities.” Citing Model United Nations or Science Olympiad as ways to cultivate career skills, it made me smile to think about how many career mentors Club Être chapters have met in the last five years. By joining a club that puts them in the room at NBC, Google or the UN…that brings them down to the floor of the NYSE and then up to the podium to ring the Nasdaq Closing Bell, some clubs offer unparalleled experiences that can change your life. Look for those.
If you can’t find clubs you want to join, start your own. Yep, that. If you can’t find one that does exactly what you want – launch your own. Every Club Être chapter – from the US to Canada, to India to South Africa, South Korea and Turkey – was launched by a girl who looked around her school and said we need more. You do. We’ll help you bring it.
Club Être middle school chapter
We need each other throughout the school year, and some days we need a crew more than ever. If you know a girl in a military family (any branch) who might want to zoom with cool women with amazing jobs, feel free to forward this newsletter. If you have an amazing job and feel a fondness for military families, DM me here. And if you just want to start a Club Être chapter at a school near you, let us know via the links below. Every new Club Être chapter brings a smile to my face…this one is going to make my heart sing on the regular.
I can already tell.
Looking forward,
Illana
ÊXTRAS: Three more pieces of info about starting a Club Être Chapter you won’t want to miss: to see more about who our BFFs and mentors are, check here; for more on starting a new Club Être chapter, click here; to learn more about our BFFs at Lean In Girls and see how we’re using their leadership tips in our clubs, swing by here. Like what you see? Join the club.
