March 08, 2012

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day (FYI: it has been celebrated in the US since 1909). The day serves as a great reminder of all that women have accomplished over the past 100+ years. But perhaps more importantly it serves as an excuse to connect our younger generation with some wonderful, older women who contributed to the many accomplishments of women over the past century.

Do you know a woman born during the 1920’s? Just think of all they lived through. They survived the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. They went to work in factories and civil service to support the troops in WWII. Many gave up those jobs and returned home to standby their husbands when they returned from the war. They had a front row seat to the civil rights movement and many more historic events that shape our current lives.

Find a way to share these stories of our older generation with the young girls of today. Take your young daughter or grand-daughter to visit with an older relative or seniors in a local care facility. A fun activity to do together would be to record an oral history. For those who have smart phones, there are many apps available for recording lectures. Or you can go old-school and take along a cassette player and blank tapes. Following are some ideas for questions you may want to ask. Use these as a starting point to think of more questions:

1. Where did your family live during the Great Depression?
2. What did your family do for a living during that time?
3. Where there any different kind of meals/food that you ate during the Great Depression?
4. When WWII started, did you work? What did you do?
5. When and where did you meet your husband?
6. After WWII was over what did you do?
7. During the Civil Rights movement, what happened in your town? Where there any protests or civil disobedience?

Help history come alive for a young girl you know by helping them learn from someone who experienced it first-hand.

- Tom