OPEN SPACES FOR GIRLS – INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS
Groupe de parole de filles, Marseille

"My Quarter is my Little House on the Prairie"

The "Triangel" is a small wedge, a kind of large alcove opposite the "Centre Social", the social centre in the small city of Pierrelatte near Marseille. "The triangle. That’s the place we head to at night. Everyone’s outside," says a girl from the ‘Groupe de parole de filles’. "Since my mother’s outside, I can go too." The Triangel is the place where groups of girls meet up. They talk, they criticise themselves, they laugh. "At the beginning the square belonged to us, but now boys come. When boys are there, we don’t go. But when they don’t come, we’re there."
Since 2003 Cecile Moulain, a female teacher, has led a group that calls itself the "Groupe de parole de filles" and meets regularly in the school library. Fifteen girls, most of Maghrebian origin and around 14, 15 and 16 years old, came to the first group. Cecile Moulain has published several brochures with the financial support of the "Department de La Drome". Originally a discussion group for topics such as love, relationships and marriage, out of it there soon developed an abundance of projects to claim space for the girls.

"Simplement libre" ("Simply Free") is the title of one brochure from the girls: "Sometimes it happens that I feel sheltered in the damned Quarter. I feel like I feel at home… although one feels the hate and the rage that have been closed up in here for so long. Despite everything I won’t abandon my Quarter. It’s my Little House on the Prairie!" The published texts of the girls often reveal the need for withdrawal especially into attached gardens, as places of refuge from young men, older brothers and mothers.