WET'S RISK TAKERS SERIES

Created in 2004, WET’s Risk Takers Series is a free, unique educational program for teenage girls designed to bolster girls’ self-esteem by teaching them invaluable media literacy and leadership skills that enable them to navigate the 21st century’s media saturated landscape with wisdom, consciousness, courage and strength. Now in its sixth season, the program serves approximately 150 New York City teenage girls annually, with students from over 80 high schools, from all five boroughs. The unique curriculum was inspired in part by The New York Times best selling non-fiction book, Reviving Ophelia, Saving The Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher, PhD.

The program empowers hundreds of New York City teenage girls to become healthy, informed, courageous leaders of society, both in their present and their futures. Risk Takers features master classes with female role models in the media. Special guests have included: Keri Russell, Olympia Dukakis, Frances McDormand, Michelle Monaghan, Kerry Washington, Mary Louise Parker, Alison Lohman, Ally Sheedy, Kelly McGillis, Kirsten Smith, Nicole Holofcener, Jessica Sharzer, Kirsten Smith and more.

The 2010 installment of Wet’s Risk Takers Series will take place at the historic New York Society for Ethical Culture. This exciting partnership will provide all of the Risk Taker participants with access to a state of the art facility who's mission is symbiotic with WET’s values and objectives.

The New York Society for Ethical Culture is a humanist and ethical movement inspired by the ideal that the supreme aim of our lives is to create a more humane society.

The Society for Ethical Culture strongly believes that acting morally does not require belief in a god. Faith is displayed in the demonstrated capacity of people to do wonderful things.

The Society promotes responsibility to each other, to society, and to the community at large; it reinforces ones inherent worth and dignity. The values that have been established in The New York Society for Ethical Culture illustrates the belief system that the Risk Takers Film Series tries to instill within the program.

PROGRAM OBJECTIVES
To teach teenage girls:

To make the distinction between empowering risks and damaging risks (e.g., studying, applying to college, speaking up in class vs. unsafe sex, drug use, eating disorders, etc.).

How to look at the media with a critical eye.

Communication and leadership skills.

Health and wellbeing (body image, sex education, stress management)

To identify, set and meet personal, educational, and professional goals.

To recognize and challenge stereotypes

To be inspired to follow their dreams.