WYSE Week 2019: Aspire to Inspire

Every Spring, WYSE branches from all across the United States celebrate WYSE Week. WYSE Week is a celebration of events with mentors, mentees, and/or on campus focusing on awareness and community action. Mentors from each branch come together in planning for WYSE Week to decide on the theme, suggest activities, and support each other. WYSE Week is truly an example of how broad and impactful the WYSE mission is.

This year, WYSE took place from April 8th - April 12th, 2019. Thank you to all of the branches for participating! Here are a few highlights:

Tulane University

We started our WYSE week session explaining the theme and the purpose of WYSE Week to our mentees. Our chapter then did an ice breaker all together and worked on a poster themed “Who do you aspire to be?” We passed the poster around our circle and all explained the traits we desire to become and why. This activity worked well with our special session for WYSE week, which was future options day. We had three guest speakers come in from the New Orleans community who shared their experiences relating to high school, college, and working with our group. These three career women each took very different paths to get to the positions they have today and our mentees really enjoyed hearing from each of them and asking lots of questions.

George Washington University

The George Washington University started off WYSE Week with 3 days of tabling in Kogan Plaza, the University’s central location. We also re-vamped the WYSE instagram (@gw_wyse) that had not been used in over a year. We utilized instagram posts and stories to make the GW community aware of WYSE Week and to interact with branches of WYSE from across the country.

At our WYSE Week meeting, our mentees made puzzle pieces describing what and who they aspired to be when they grow up, in an activity called “Peace by Piece.” After discussing what it means to aspire to do something, mentors and mentees made collages of the puzzle pieces, and GW’s mentors are working with the Women’s Studies department to put this collage on display for the GW community to enjoy. Our topic for discussion for WYSE week was conflict resolution, so the mentors and mentees performed role playing skits to demonstrate how to best resolve conflicts among friends and family. GW’s WYSE mentors felt like WYSE Week was a super cool experience for all of us to spread the word about WYSE on our campus and interact with both our mentees and WYSE branches across the country in new ways.

University of California, Los Angeles

UCLA WYSE participated in WYSE Week 2019: Aspire to Inspire by having both mentors and mentees write what they aspire to be (not including a job or career) on an index card. Some responses included: "a positive impact in someone's life, my better self, a force for change, etc." This was integrated well with our site on identity where we had an outline of a body and asked mentees to describe how they perceive themselves using adjectives and phrases. Their current evaluations of themselves in the present bridged the way for what they strive to be in the future. We coordinated this activity at both of our sites, Mark Twain Middle School and Francisco Sepulveda Middle School. We also published a video on our social media sites where we showcased all of our mentee responses on a bulletin board.

We connected with other branches during WYSE Week by interacting on their social media posts through Instagram and Facebook, as well as presenting their WYSE Week activities and social media posts to our club members during site and reflection meetings. 

University of California, Irvine

Our WYSE week went really well! All of the mentors and mentees loved the theme, and we had a lot of fun incorporating the theme into our session. We had mentor spotlights where each mentor said what they aspired to be, and we shared these on social media, in order to connect more with other branches. We decided to inspire students on our campus by sticking inspiring and uplifting sticky notes all around our campus. With the mentees, we had made a poster where the mentees wrote what characteristics they aspire to acquire or have. Overall, it was a great theme, and I'm glad we were able to share so much positivity.

This is just a small example of all of the amazing examples of leadership and empowerment happening across our WYSE branches. Thanks to everyone who participated this year!

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