OLA supports New Moon initiative - call for sponsorship

OLA is supporting the New Moon initiative as part of our commitment to young and emerging leaders.

We are thrilled to be offering 10 New Moon memberships to help girls from low-income families flourish in this safe online environment. The plan is for our partners at Girls Scouts Arizona Cactus Pine Council to distribute the memberships to girls in their community on our behalf.

We would love you to join us and become big brothers and sisters to this wonderful movement, as it is in danger of closing at the end of the year.
 

Over to Joe Kelly of New Moon to give you a little more background...

For 17 years, New Moon Girls online community and magazine has given girls ages 8 and up a safe, exciting, supportive space to express themselves and hear from other girls around the world. Girls who could be the next Courtney Martin (a finalist this week in Washington Post's America's Next Great Pundit contest) whose first article was published in New Moon when she was a girl, 14 years ago.

Sadly, this will all end on 31st December 2009 without your help.

New Moon has had a tough year like many other businesses and they have until Dec 31 to reach monthly break-even so that New Moon can grow in the future. The good news is that your help can close this gap. The gap amounts to only 250 additional orders a month @ $29.95.
You can help by:

Please act today so the media universe for girls won't be totally dominated by Stardoll.com, Seventeen magazine, and worse.

Thank you, Joe

Joe has also kindly allowed us to reproduce his article "Do Dads Matter to Daughters?"

Do Dads Matter to Daughters?

I'm really struggling with the fact that I don't verbalize how wonderful my daughters are often enough. I do tell them, but it does not flow spontaneously from my being. I don't have the training or the modeling for it. I'll say "good job!" But I also don't want it to be "job." You know-the idea that you have value because you did something. That has been my toughest thing. Maybe just sitting with them with my arm around them, maybe that's telling them how special they are to me. I'm not sure. I have very little confidence about myself.

In more than 25 years of talking and corresponding with thousands of men with daughters and stepdaughters, I've yet to meet one who made it through fathering without some serious doubts.

But despite our doubts, the impact of a father or stepfather on his daughter is astounding. Many of us vaguely sense this reality, but don't fully realize its meaning. First, having grown up as boys, we often can't understand our daughters at all. Secondly, we often buy into the notion (shared by many around us) that raising girls is women's work.

Well, if you have any question about the impact "Dad" has, ask six adult women about their relationships with their fathers and stepfathers. The answers (seldom lukewarm) will fall into two general categories:

My dad was/is my hero.

My dad was/is an [expletive deleted].

A woman in Oklahoma City once told me:

My father is my one male role model. And I really compare all other men in the world to my father. He is the most loving, accepting, honorable, responsible, nurturing person. He is the model that I judge all other men by-fair or not fair. The love and support and encouragement I had through those years, and continue to have, has made me a much stronger person.

In the end, we have incredible influence in our daughters' lives. It is imperative that we use it positively and intelligently, even when we're not always conscious of it.

Before my daughter Nia set off to ride her bicycle around Lake Superior (the largest of the Great Lakes), I overheard her tell someone that she got into biking because I'd taken her riding on a local trail.

 We only did that a couple of times, and I'm no endurance (or speed-demon) biker. But that shared experience turned her on to distance biking, even though I never knew it. That's why I try to always act and speak around my daughters in ways that they'd be proud of.

We have many choices about how to use this influence. We can send our daughters down life's road with clear and healthy expectations for men, or leave them lost in tangled underbrush, confused about what to accept from men. They will probably be drawn to men who choose paths similar to the ones we tread as men and fathers. At minimum, that means being an integral part of our daughters' lives, not abandoning them to wander into the world of boys and men without our strong, supportive and nurturing masculinity. Our example is the road map they use to discover relationships (romantic or not) with boys and men we'd be proud to have as sons and brothers.

We fathers lay the best foundation when we listen to and respect our girls. Bruce, a divorced dad from Germany, relearned that lesson recently:

This weekend was the first time I'd seen my daughter in several weeks. I was tempted to grill her: "Why don't you answer my calls or text messages? Are you angry about something I said?" Instead, I listened to what she had to say about herself, her school, her mother, what's new in her life since we last saw each other. It was truly amazing what came out when I remembered to keep my mouth shut for awhile! It was a great, relaxed weekend with lots of laughter and affection.

Psychologist and divorced father William Klatte, author of the book "Live-Away Dads", says listening is essential for every father, even though it sometimes goers against our instincts:

Lecturing and arguing get me nowhere. I can't help my daughter if I minimize her feelings or falsely tell her everything will be okay when I can't guarantee that it will. Instead, listen and be there for her. Accept my daughter for who she is; not who I want her to be, think she should be, or think she would be if I was the only adult in her life. Take the lead in communicating -- even when I feel unappreciated. I may not agree with everything she says or does, but when I listen, I build the emotional connection that will help her listen to me when it really counts.

The most under-utilized tool for fathers is other fathers. As walking encyclopedias of wisdom and experience, veteran dads can remind us that there's no magic formula for fathers to follow in raising daughters. Veteran dads know that fathering is far more art than it is science.

Fathering author Will Glennon puts it this way:

True fathering is not the physical act of planting a seed, it is the conscious decision to tend and nourish the seedling. Real fathering is not biological-it is the conscious choice to build an unconditional and unbreakable connection to another human being. Once that choice is made, it cannot be unmade.

A man's life is irrevocably transformed by having a female child. There's nothing else quite like that experience-one too wonderful to pass up.

Joe Kelly has two adult daughters, runs the DadsandDaughters.com website and has written 4 fathering books, including the best-selling "Dads & Daughters®: How to Inspire, Support and Understand Your Daughter". He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota and speaks widely around North America on fathering and family issues.