ORONO – The University of Maine Cooperative Extension Strengthening Women’s Leadership Capacity Project is accepting registrations for the coming year. Organizers describe the nine-month educational series as “a place for women to experiment with stepping into their full competent powerful selves as women and to practice effective leadership.”

“The project provides a place where women interested in exploring leadership in their lives, whether professionally or personally, can strengthen their leadership muscle,” said Louise Cyr, an Extension educator who coordinates the project with Deb Burwell. “This is a developmental process and the group provides support and tools for each woman’s process.”

By joining the series, participants will deepen their knowledge about personal power; gain more understanding about their own potency and the effect their actions have on others; learn how to use personal power in service of bringing about social change; practice engaging in conflict, staying in the heat and cleaning up the toxic waste; explore how internalized oppression and sexism can get in the way of leadership capacity; and become part of a local network of women actively exploring their own female authority.

The series begins Oct. 14 and meets the second Tuesday of each month for nine months. Meetings are held from 6 to 9 p.m. An informational meeting will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 16, at 185 Harlow Street, Suite 2, the old schoolhouse. Enter through the door farthest from the library.

A brochure and registration are available from Cyr at (800) 287-0274 or Burwell at 338-3162.