OUR COMMITMENT TO BLACK GIRLS

  • To see, love, and protect Black girls.

  • To safeguard and preserve Black girlhood.

  • To teach Black girls a proper knowledge of self.

  • To encourage the importance of Black girls creating, having and experiencing joy.

  • To create safe spaces for Black girls to heal, dream, imagine, build, and be.

  • To help Black girls embrace & identify their individuality.

  • To teach Black girls how to self-love and self-care.

  • To teach Black girls how to care for, support, love on, and protect other Black girls.

  • To help Black girls discover and use their unique and diverse voices.

  • To aid Black girls in the development of life skills essential to building a powerful, healed, whole, healthy and unique self.

  • To help Black girls [know they can] impact and create social & economic change, political change, and cultural shifts within their very own families, communities, schools, and the world.

  • To create a clear pathway for Black girls to pursue education at the highest level.

  • To build and educate articulate, brave, and outspoken young Black women leaders.

  • To help Black girls understand and feel empowered enough to interrupt the singular expression of Black identity and beauty.

  • To help Black girls unpack, understand and dismantle the pillars of patriarchy & oppression.

  • To expose Black girls to phenomenal PEOPLE.


THE WORK

  1. INTEGRITY: We demand it for and from Black girls.

  2. INDIVIDUALITY:  We cultivate, incite and celebrate individuality among Black girls in a society that tells them to conform. 

  3. AGENCY: We aid (and advocate for) Black girls in their understanding of having choice - despite the many social factors of influence like class, religion, gender, race or ability. We want Black girls to have agency over their own lives and agency over their own bodies. 

  4. INTERSECTIONALITY:  We introduce the ideology of intersectionality as we continue to deepen the understanding that Black girls have [of their] multiple identities. 

  5. COLORISM & HAIRISM:  We address the unfortunate value assigned to skin hues and hair textures in the world, unpack the dynamics of what they mean socially, and encourage (and work toward) the eradication of colorism and hairism [through a deeper historical, cultural and social understanding of its roots in European standards of beauty] for the betterment of ALL Black girls.

  6. MIS-EDUCATION & HISTORY:  A re-education of who we are, what we are, and the history of where we come from, so that it positively shapes character and confidence for Black girls, as well as honors their identity and humanity.

  7. SISTERHOOD: We nurture and galvanize oneness and solidarity in a culture that tells Black girls to compare and to compete with other black girls.

  8. CELEBRATION: We affirm and celebrate the unique experiences of Black girls that are regularly left out of popular American culture.

QUESTIONS? EMAIL GIRLS@UNIQUELYYOUSUMMIT.ORG