Joan McDonald (right), course director for Ventures in Girls' Education, shows basic canoe strokes during a shore lecture Saturday. Photo by Alvin Powell.

Mary McCorvey and Mousson Berrouet both smiled nervously and admitted they hadn't ever been in a canoe before. Neither swims very well either.

Still, there they were, life-jacketed and walking down a forested dirt road in Medfield, Mass., last Saturday, May 1, heading toward a group of canoes pulled up on the bank of the nearby Charles River.

"Hopefully, we're going to get an experienced person in our canoe," McCorvey said.

McCorvey, a master's degree student at the Graduate School of Education, and Berrouet, a 7th-grader from the Longfellow School in Cambridge, are part of a unique mentoring program called Project Athena, involving the Graduate School of Education, the Longfellow School, and a Wellesley-based private, nonprofit organization called the Center for Ventures in Girls' Education.

Project Athena links 7th-grade girls from the Longfellow School with graduate students from Associate Professor of Education Ann Rogers' Psychology of Girls and Women class, H-644. The program's aim is to bolster the girls' self-confidence, self- esteem, and to help them think broadly when considering lifetime goals.

"Adolescence is a time of crisis," said Joann Stemmermann, director of the Center for Ventures in Girls' Education, instructor in education at the Graduate School of Education, and project associate with Harvard Outward Bound. "While they're entering this period, we are giving them an adult to talk to who can reflect back the girls' best qualities."

Though McCorvey is the mentor and Berrouet the "mentee," as they are called, the canoe trip was designed not only to broaden horizons, but also to put the mentor and mentee on an equal footing.

Project Athena participants take to the Charles River during an activity day for the mentoring program. Photo by Alvin Powell.

"Canoeing is great because it kind of levels everybody," Rogers said. "There are very few [Project Athena] mentors who are expert canoers."

Last Saturday's trip involved about 30 girls, mentors, instructors, and program officials. After an hourlong canoe school on land that covered canoe basics and safety, the group paddled roughly 10 meandering miles on the upper Charles River, from Medfield to Natick.

It was the second such outdoor event in this year's program, which was launched in September with a weekend session that involved rock climbing -- another leveling experience -- and mask making, a fun, artistic activity that promotes trust because each has to lie still for 30 minutes as their partner makes a plaster mold of their face.

In addition to the outdoor excursions, the graduate students and Longfellow students meet weekly for activities that range from seeing a movie to sewing to studying. The only rules governing the activity is that it must be mutually agreed upon and each must pay their own way.

In addition to the weekly one-on-one meetings, there are monthly program nights, where all the mentors and mentees get together for group activities, and monthly nights for the mentors, where they can touch base with supervisors and other mentors to seek ideas and advice for their mentoring relationship.

"This program is a relational mentoring program. We really focus on fostering the best qualities of each girl, and we try to keep her connected with her true self," Stemmermann said.

This is the Project's second year at Harvard, Stemmermann said. The program runs through the school year, September to June, with new mentors and mentees coming in each year.

Though Harvard is the only Project Athena site this year, the program has been in other communities and schools in the past, Stemmermann said. Project Athena was launched by the Center for Ventures in Girls' Education in 1994 and was first put into place in Duxbury, involving people from the community and Duxbury school children. It is funded by an after school grant from the Massachusetts Campus Compact and the Massachusetts Service Alliance.

Though Project Athena has existed in other communities, the Harvard version is special because it involves students from the Graduate School of Education, most of whom have experience teaching or working with young girls, Project Athena organizers said. In addition, the students are selected from the Psychology of Girls and Women class, which gives the mentors an opportunity to put into practice what they are learning about girls' development.

"They really learn the theory of girls' development in that course," Rogers said. "The program is unique because we provide an emphasis on mentoring the mentors."

Project Athena developed out of research Rogers did in the 1980s on courage in young girls. Rogers defined courage as the everyday courage present in children -- who can laugh and sing and dance in public without feeling self-conscious.

Rogers observed that as girls grow through adolescence, much of that courage is lost. Girls tend to withdraw, be less outspoken, and have trouble talking about themselves and their lives. Rogers put some of the blame on the conflicting messages girls today are subject to. On the one hand, society tells them to speak up and be independent. On the other, society says girls should put others first, keep their voices moderated, and not hurt others' feelings.

The mentor's aim is to help the girl work through some of those contradictions, boost her self-esteem, and encourage her positive qualities.

"What we really encourage the mentor to do is engage the girl with an honesty that is rare in most relationships between girls and adults and to challenge them not to shut down," Rogers said. "It means really listening to the girls."

Longfellow School Principal Margarita Otero-Alvarez believes in the program enough to supervise the school's end of it herself. After just two years, the program's results haven't been measured statistically, but Otero-Alvarez said anecdotal evidence of its success exists. One thing she has noticed is that more of the girls in the program voice interest in attending college.

"The raising of self-esteem in these girls is incredible," Otero-Alvarez said. "For me, the biggest thing is the hope and dream that they see themselves as girls that can go on to college."

Stemmermann said that increased interest in college is not something she's observed at other sites where Project Athena has been in operation. She credits the mentors themselves for that change.

"It happens because these people are students. It is very rich for [the girls] to see an adult who they respect who wants to go to school," Stemmermann said.