ATLANTA (February 27, 2007) – GOAL, a nonprofit organization that provides experiential programs that build self-awareness in adolescent girls, is partnering with Raytheon to present  Girls’ Leadership Summit – Inspiring Girls to Lead on Saturday, March 10.  The summit will bring together 60 middle school girls from the greater Boston area to learn, share and celebrate the inherent qualities that girls and women possess, preparing and propelling them to serve and to succeed in all levels of leadership.

“Raytheon has shown a great deal of innovation in putting together this summit,” said Gail Rothman, chief executive officer of GOAL.  “Where others may not see a connection, Raytheon understands that by investing in these young girls it is making a tremendous investment not only in its business, but also in its community and in our country as a whole.”

Volunteer facilitators, trained by GOAL, will lead the summit’s four workshops.  The forum will introduce girls to women leaders and provide fun and engaging experiential activities that will explore the concept of leadership and encourage girls to realize their unique leadership potential.  The workshops are:

• Your Colorful Style - Girls identify the qualities of leadership and then choose which “style” is their natural tendency.  Girls analyze their individual style and, along with team members, create a skit that demonstrates leadership style strengths and challenges.

• Instant Messaging: Redefining Girlhood - Girls analyze the messages of pop culture, identifying negative imagery in songs, magazines and television.  Girls respond by creating a message-board, rewriting and thereby reclaiming the images associated with girlhood.  In order to identify themselves as leaders, girls must first reject the associations disempowering them.

• Road Map to Leadership - Girls participate in a giant, interactive board game as teams, attempting to complete a roadmap and use leadership skills to overcome obstacles in reaching their group goals. Lessons learned from game-play will be utilized to map out a personal growth plan.

• Everyday Sheroes - Girls will share “real-life” profiles of girl and women leaders, “everyday heroes” who achieved success by harnessing their inherent qualities to make a positive impact on the lives of others.   Girls will then create an artistic piece identifying and listing the girls and women in their own lives who serve as positive role models.

Girls’ Leadership Summit was created by a Raytheon team led by Gretchen Collings, a program manager for Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems.  "Inspiring girls to lead today will grow our women leaders of tomorrow.  This is incredibly motivating," Collings said.  "When Raytheon’s leadership agreed to support the program, we searched for a partner with experience in working with middle school girls and found a perfect fit in GOAL.  We are all so pleased with the way the summit is shaping up and very excited about the opportunity to do something fun and meaningful for girls.”