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Show Study to focus on plight of rural women by Teri Gomes Last fall, Pat Whitfield attended at-tended a conference in Salt Lake where the data on the plight of the rural young women in the West today came out sounding rather hopeless. When the call for grant applications crossed her desk last spring, she remembered the stories about the young women, mostly Native Americans, and applied to the federal government for a grant to help this largely-ignored minority. She recently received confirmation that she has gotten the grant. The $25,000 grant has been given to Whitfield, director of elementary education at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, to create broad educational opportunities for young rtral women. She plans to set ud consortiums in V several surrounding states: eastern Nevada, southern Idaho, western Wyoming and northern Utah. The idea behind the consortiums con-sortiums is to create a network net-work of approximately 250 women to share their successes suc-cesses and failures with other women in similar settings. set-tings. "There is almost an acute depression among these rural under-30-year-old women," said Whitfield. "For them, getting married is an expectation, not an aspiration. There is currently curren-tly limited opportunity for this group to excel." One of the objectives of the study is to find mentors for these girls within their own region. She acknowledged there are large numbers of women ranchers, poets and artists in the West who are highly successful. Ideally these women would also become part of the network in each region. "It is amazing to me how this group of women can become so totally discouarged in life so early and yet they carry on. It is really jut like the tales of early pioneer women and the hardships they had to overcome. over-come. The difference is, these women with some limited education ?id a strong mentor could change their direction in life. I hope this program will offer them that opportunity." The program will conclude next spring when the women in these consoritums will gather for a conference at Westminster to share their successes and their failures together. |