The Ophelia's Voice model emphasizes that girls' empowerment and leadership development is sequential and progressive. With an ultimate goal of having girls self-initiate their own community action projects, the process begins with dialogue and education around issues and spheres of influence that affect teen girls on a daily basis.

• Education: In Ophelia's Voice this is achieved through group discussions, independent journaling, educational workshops, and guest speakers on topics such as healthy sexuality, body image and self esteem, violence prevention, or global awareness.
• Support and Mentorship: Ophelia's Voice creates a sense of support and solidarity among participants by developing an initial respect contract, establishing a non-judgmental and confidential environment, and offering one-on-one mentorships for girls if they want to discuss an issue or experience further with a youth facilitator or adult mentor. Participants are made aware that they can contact adult mentors or youth facilitators at any time outside of the programming for support.
• Empowerment: In Ophelia's Voice a sense of empowerment comes from skill-building and education. Girls are empowered with an increase in critical thinking, resiliency, and self-confidence that stems from their participation in a girl-specific environment.
• Skill Building: Girls in Ophelia's Voice build skills through practical and hands-on experience in community volunteerism or planning events and projects (for example, girls using video equipment and media arts to produce a video to raise awareness about dating abuse). Girls, in teams, are given the opportunity in Ophelia's Voice, through mini-grants of seed funding and mentorships, to plan their own social justice projects.
• Leadership: Leadership is the subsequent step to skill-building in Ophelia's Voice. When girls are equipped with skills, such as self-advocacy, media arts, or facilitation, they can in turn transfer those skills to others and apply their skills to concrete situations and experiences.
• Community Engagement: When girls feel equipped, and well-informed enough, to contribute to their community, they can authentically engage in community issues with policymakers and adults. Such an example is the progressive nature of our Healthy Children Healthy Communities project - girls discussed the issues of young people's health, created a supportive environment, built public speaking and media relations skills, and finally engaged with policymakers and organizations at the National Roundtable in Ottawa where they suggested recommendations for healthier communities across Canada.
• Self Directed Activism: Our eventual goal for participants of Ophelia's Voice is to provide support for them to initiate their own community action projects. After girls have the understanding of the issues and the related skills and leadership experience, our role is to offer funding and ongoing support to girls as they initiate their own projects in the community on an issue they are passionate about. This final step in our model enables girls to have first-hand experience in initiating social change.