Two art gallery openings, featuring 15 local African-American female artists working with diverse techniques and media, will open August 9 -- but there's a twist.
The artists are girls 8 to 10-years-old participating in Girls Health Enrichment Multi-site Studies, or GEMS, a study by The University of Memphis center for community health.
The program, which is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, according to Jennifer Lanctot, project coordinator for GEMS.
According to the principal coordinator for the GEMS program, Bettina Beech, girls "self-esteem begins to diminish, because for girls aged 8 to 10-years-old, it is a particularly precarious period in their development."
The two-part program's data will be used nationally in one of the largest grants given to the center for community health, according to program coordinators.
The five-year program is made up of 5 two-year waves of girls, each group consisting of 15 girls.
"This will be something that when completed, the data will be disseminated and used nationwide--it's big," said Field Coordinator Janet Murphree.
GEMS is the umbrella name for two separate programs that hope to promote physical fitness and emotion growth through a two-year period. The program itself is funded through 2007. The U of M is one of two universities conducting this study. The other is Stanford University.
The Eating and Activity Skills for Youth or EASY program stresses physical fitness and couples exercise with physical wellness and development. "We try to develop good eating habits," and ways the girls will keep them after the study is done, said Anita Rhinehouse, field coordinator for GEMS.
The program sets out to "educate the girls on reading food labels at an early age," and introduce fruits and vegetables in the diets of girls in the study, said Rhinehouse.
The other program, Striving To Achieve Responsible Students or STARS, focuses on developing positive self-esteem and citizenship.
STARS, of which the art gallery is part, centers around activities designed to develop the girls emotionally and provide self-assuredness, said Rhinehouse.
The art exhibit will be a chance for the girls to display to their parents what they have been doing for the year and a half the girls have been in the study. Because parents are only allowed to participate in the EASY program, the art exhibit will allow parents to get a first hand look at the girls' work.
The GEMS project is structured in such a way that the girls feel they are in a "club for girls," where the problems that begin to creep up at this age are hopefully prevented, said Beech.
At the end of the five-year study Beech hopes to find that the preventive methods the study used will show an increase in social-efficacy and in self-esteem for the girls.
"You can tell the girls really enjoy the study," said Rhinehouse, "I just wish there had been something like this when I was growing up."
The exhibits will display the girls' art at two locations. The Marion Hale Community Center and the Davis YMCA, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. This is also where the girls meet once monthly.
