Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wik a f Daily
Speaker 1: with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker, Folks,
Speaker 1: I want to take a minute to talk about something
Speaker 1: that I try and inject in most shows and most weeks,
Speaker 1: but it's come up a lot, particularly since the shooting
Speaker 1: in Tennessee on Monday, which is mental health. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've gotten a lot of tweets from people. I posted
Speaker 1: a video on both Instagram and TikTok yesterday about what
Speaker 1: it means to take care of yourself during these times.
Speaker 1: And I know that a lot of us right by
Speaker 1: virtue of working and you know, having families and taking
Speaker 1: care of whether it's children or elderly people. Just continue
Speaker 1: to power through, continue to power through in a way
Speaker 1: that does not acknowledge the feelings of overwhelm, that does
Speaker 1: not acknowledge and allow ourselves to sit with the fear
Speaker 1: that many of us are living with. There is a
Speaker 1: lot of fear, and rightfully so, because this world, this
Speaker 1: society that we are living in, is incredibly unpredictable. Now
Speaker 1: people will say, look, life is unpredictable. You know, you
Speaker 1: many of us have lost people that we cared about unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: through accidents, through disease. We know that life is unpredictable,
Speaker 1: but what it feels like right now is that we
Speaker 1: are just sitting ducks, literally, just sitting ducks, just waiting
Speaker 1: for the next mass shooting, waiting for the next disaster,
Speaker 1: waiting for the next insurrection, waiting for the next you know,
Speaker 1: historic storm, waiting for the next derailment, waiting for the
Speaker 1: next announcement of a town that doesn't have clean water.
Speaker 1: And so what I say to all of you is
Speaker 1: the same thing that I say to myself and the
Speaker 1: same thing that I've been saying all week. You know,
Speaker 1: turn it off. That doesn't mean to ignore what is happening,
Speaker 1: but it's to understand when you've reached your limits, when
Speaker 1: it is okay to tap out and make sure that
Speaker 1: you are getting outside and going walking that you or running,
Speaker 1: that you are, you know, moving your body that you
Speaker 1: are able to you know, sit, whether it is in
Speaker 1: prayer or in meditation or just taking some nice, slow
Speaker 1: deep breaths, you know, if it is going and sitting
Speaker 1: in nature, or focusing on a houseplant that you may have,
Speaker 1: or taking a care of a pet. But folks, it
Speaker 1: is really really critical that each and every day, a
Speaker 1: few times a day, that you allow yourself to just pause. Now,
Speaker 1: I gave examples of things to do that is not
Speaker 1: a way to neglect how you're feeling, but it's a
Speaker 1: way to balance your feelings, you know. I find and
Speaker 1: as many people therapists and doctors have said, crying is cathartic, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's okay to cry, It's okay to have moments
Speaker 1: of breakdown. Right. It's when we start wallowing and marinating
Speaker 1: in despair and in hopelessness that we need to be concerned.
Speaker 1: But we should be having conversations with each other about
Speaker 1: how we are feeling. Asking yourself as well as your
Speaker 1: friends and family, are you okay? You know, how has
Speaker 1: all of this news, How has it been hitting you?
Speaker 1: What you know, mechanisms for processing have you been using.
Speaker 1: I have told many of you that I have been
Speaker 1: in therapy over the last five years. It is the
Speaker 1: best money that I could ever spend. You know, I
Speaker 1: had the privilege during the pandemic to begin a meditation
Speaker 1: practice that I continued to this day. You know, on Monday,
Speaker 1: after the news broke, and I'm on social media and
Speaker 1: I'm furious and the rage, you know, began to subside.
Speaker 1: The grief set in, and I got off of my
Speaker 1: couch and I turned off my television. I put my
Speaker 1: phone on do not disturb. I took out a book.
Speaker 1: I did a long meditation and some breathing, and I cried.
Speaker 1: I for the families. I cried for the children. I
Speaker 1: cried for those I cried for the children that were taken,
Speaker 1: that were killed, the administrators, the custodian that were taken
Speaker 1: that were killed. But I cried for all of the
Speaker 1: children and the administrators, the teachers, the families, the community
Speaker 1: that would now have to join a club that nobody
Speaker 1: wants to be a part of. Because while we sit
Speaker 1: and we grieve for those that are lost, we're not
Speaker 1: really understanding the trauma that these kids are now going
Speaker 1: to live with and grow into adulthood with, right as
Speaker 1: well as those teachers and those administrators. Like, look, we
Speaker 1: can tell ourselves logically like, oh, this will never happen again,
Speaker 1: or but it's not true. It may not happen in
Speaker 1: that particular school again, but we know it's going to
Speaker 1: happen again. And so with each shooting, our anxiety, our grief,
Speaker 1: our fear go through the roof and we take that
Speaker 1: on in a very physical and real way. You know,
Speaker 1: I spoke about this on the Mary Trump Show that
Speaker 1: I've gone to the dentist recently to find out that
Speaker 1: I pretty much ground my back molars flat. They said,
Speaker 1: are you under a lot of stress? They and I
Speaker 1: literally laughed at the dentist. I am, I under a
Speaker 1: lot of stress? Yeah, just a little bit, right. But
Speaker 1: if we don't find purposeful, therapeutic and healthy ways to
Speaker 1: release the pain, emotional and physical pain that we are in,
Speaker 1: it will turn into disease ease. So it is not
Speaker 1: about becoming ostriches and ignoring our feelings. It is about
Speaker 1: processing those feelings, building community to process those feelings, finding
Speaker 1: healthy habits to help us process these feelings. Because the
Speaker 1: overwhelm is real, and it is okay, dear friends, to
Speaker 1: not be okay all the time. So you know, I
Speaker 1: really hope that you really do heed this and take
Speaker 1: this advice that I offer, because it's something that I
Speaker 1: literally tell myself every day in the mirror, which is
Speaker 1: why walking has become my salvation in a lot of ways. Okay,
Speaker 1: Coming up next, dear friends, my interview with Don L.
Speaker 1: Brown from the Empower Her Institute to talk about something
Speaker 1: good that is happening in schools with young women of color.
Speaker 1: And I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope that
Speaker 1: you all do too. Folks. I am very excited to
Speaker 1: welcome to woka F Daily Don L. Brown, who is
Speaker 1: the President and CEO of Empower Her Institute. Don you
Speaker 1: come to woke F at a good time and also
Speaker 1: a bad time, a time when we are recognizing that
Speaker 1: there is a pandemic that we are not talking about
Speaker 1: in this country, which is that of the mental and
Speaker 1: emotional health and well being of our nation's youth. And
Speaker 1: a CDC report had come out that stated that from
Speaker 1: twenty eleven until twenty two one, this ten year spanning
Speaker 1: report says that suicidal thoughts and behaviors of young people
Speaker 1: had increased at an alarming rate and disproportionately affects girls
Speaker 1: of color. Can you tell us some more about this
Speaker 1: crisis that we don't seem to see in the news
Speaker 1: or in the headlines in the way that we should. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: what the CDC report essentially said is exactly what you
Speaker 1: just mentioned. That we are seeing an increase over the
Speaker 1: past ten years with a significant increase over the past
Speaker 1: three to five years of a suicidal ideation with girls
Speaker 1: of color. And you know, often in our country, when
Speaker 1: we were talking about girls of color, it isn't something
Speaker 1: that makes the news right, and so it's not shocking
Speaker 1: that it has. What we're seeing as young people are
Speaker 1: experiencing significant trauma, and that increase comes from everything from
Speaker 1: the social social media. There's been an increase of bullying
Speaker 1: as a result of social media. You know, we're making commons,
Speaker 1: children are making comments to one another like kill yourself,
Speaker 1: things that we even when we were bullying each other
Speaker 1: back in the day, we were saying those kinds of things,
Speaker 1: but it becomes a joke that feels like so much
Speaker 1: more for them. We're seeing, you know, young girls are experiencing.
Speaker 1: What we're not talking about is that black and brown
Speaker 1: girls specifically are experience and massage in law. They are
Speaker 1: experiencing high increases of that which we are not having
Speaker 1: conversations about, and they think that there's something wrong with them.
Speaker 1: There is normal teenage angst that's happening, but the conversations
Speaker 1: aren't happening to support them through what is happening in
Speaker 1: their bodies. What's happening in their emotions and their feelings.
Speaker 1: Everyone thinks, we're looking at social media, everyone's life looks perfect,
Speaker 1: and so they think something is wrong with them, that
Speaker 1: their life doesn't feel that way. UM. And the conversations
Speaker 1: that are happening amongst one another when we talk, when
Speaker 1: they talk about UH supporting one another is more around
Speaker 1: UH discussions of UM harm and UM and supporting one
Speaker 1: another in group decisions around harm. So we are that,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what's happening in the world right now. UM.
Speaker 1: Black and brown girls are experiencing racism and sexism and
Speaker 1: gender you know challenges UM in ways that and and
Speaker 1: there's there's challenges and questions around sexual identity UM that
Speaker 1: are now openly being discussed and yet still hushed in
Speaker 1: our community. UM. And so I think all of those
Speaker 1: things sort of poal on UM in addition to just
Speaker 1: the the the weight of what it looks like when
Speaker 1: we are when young people are, you know, dealing with school,
Speaker 1: we always want to say, hey, that's not a big deal,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, though I got to work every day,
Speaker 1: but you know, having to go through tests and the
Speaker 1: anxiety that comes with that and having you know, multiple
Speaker 1: responsibilities and expectations on them and then being dismissed around
Speaker 1: that really those weights are heavy, and they do calls
Speaker 1: additional trauma and a silencing of their voices. I think
Speaker 1: that a part of this, in a large way, one
Speaker 1: goes to the fact, and you tell me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: that we have never created the type of mental health
Speaker 1: infrastructure in our schools, right, correct, in our public schools
Speaker 1: to deal with the varying emotions, hormones, but very live
Speaker 1: and real trauma. You know, while while a parent could say,
Speaker 1: you know, as you mentioned in your example, say well
Speaker 1: you know, I have to work every day. All you
Speaker 1: have to do is go to school. Well, this is
Speaker 1: a generation of children that do active shooter drills the
Speaker 1: way that we used to do fire drills. You know,
Speaker 1: we grew up. I would like to think that those
Speaker 1: of us who are adults of a certain age grew
Speaker 1: up at a time when school was seen as a
Speaker 1: safe place, right, like the worst thing that could happen
Speaker 1: was a fire, right that you were prepared for, and
Speaker 1: you saw the fire doors, and you did those drills.
Speaker 1: But now we send kids to school all over this
Speaker 1: country and we can't tell them for certain that they're
Speaker 1: coming back. That's just one instance of daily lived trauma.
Speaker 1: So can you speak to how that which has become
Speaker 1: regular headlines and a regular part of the American experience,
Speaker 1: also plays a part in what children are experiencing nowadays. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: there is no real discussion around social emotional learning. That
Speaker 1: is not happening, That is not a part of the curriculum.
Speaker 1: I know that there has now been discussions around schools
Speaker 1: and a school districts now that are beginning to introduce
Speaker 1: social emotional learning but as part of the curriculum and
Speaker 1: a required part of the curriculum. But for ten years
Speaker 1: even more, that wasn't happening. So no, there was They've
Speaker 1: taken health classes out, so they're not having conversations. I
Speaker 1: remember when I went to school. I remember not wanting
Speaker 1: us sit in there on those classes, but then loving
Speaker 1: them afterwards because we had we got to talk about
Speaker 1: what was happening in our bodies and what was happening
Speaker 1: in our emotions, and they separated us male and female,
Speaker 1: and they had those conversations. That's been taken out of
Speaker 1: the schools because of budget cuts, right, and so even
Speaker 1: something as simple as pe in many cases has been
Speaker 1: taken out of schools because of budget cuts, and we
Speaker 1: think about the stress reduction that comes with that physical activity.
Speaker 1: And then when you as you mentioned, when it comes
Speaker 1: to like psychology and having school therapists in public schools,
Speaker 1: when we look at the budget cuts, they got to
Speaker 1: focus on the specifics of the education the abc D,
Speaker 1: you know, requirements. And so when you look at somewhere
Speaker 1: like La County, which is where I am based, when
Speaker 1: you look at LAUSD and other public schools that are
Speaker 1: in the area that we work with, a school psychologist
Speaker 1: gets five schools. So there's one school psychologist to five schools.
Speaker 1: When you think about that, they have one day at
Speaker 1: each school. Sometimes they don't even have a full day.
Speaker 1: And that's your average. And so we have I work
Speaker 1: with a thousand girls a year and we see them
Speaker 1: on a weekly basis. Most of them have no idea
Speaker 1: that there is a school psychologist because they have never
Speaker 1: seen that person, or if they do see them, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we see them like once every other week, like and
Speaker 1: nobody goes there because she's always booked, you know. And
Speaker 1: so when you're when we're dealing with those kinds of
Speaker 1: economical challenges and yet in the same situation as you mentioned.
Speaker 1: They're going through active shooting courses, right, they are learning
Speaker 1: drills who so that I never had to learn, you know,
Speaker 1: we've never had to learn those things. And you know,
Speaker 1: even just talking without girls, one of the projects that
Speaker 1: our girls do is a social justice Seemed project and
Speaker 1: they get to decide on a social justice issue they
Speaker 1: want to explore. And you'd be surprised how many of
Speaker 1: them wanted to have conversations. They either want to explore
Speaker 1: an issue around race or they want to explore an
Speaker 1: issue around shooting and gun you know, and gun control.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things that you know
Speaker 1: has been said is but nobody cares because there hasn't
Speaker 1: been a change in the policies and the laws. And
Speaker 1: people don't think that our young people are having those
Speaker 1: conversations or having those thoughts, but they are. They're very aware.
Speaker 1: They're very aware of what's happening in the world. They're
Speaker 1: very aware of the fact that, you know, there are
Speaker 1: no change in laws and policies. They understand that their
Speaker 1: government has said, hey, you know, we know that this
Speaker 1: is happening, and we're just gonna keep praying for you, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, those those are conversations that the
Speaker 1: girls are having, that they are having with us, that
Speaker 1: they say to us. And so we're not introducing these thoughts,
Speaker 1: they're introducing them to us. Right, So yeah, that does
Speaker 1: that plays a big role in this. And we we can't,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't negate the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: I remember going to school and we learned about officer
Speaker 1: friendly in elementary school and there was an officer who
Speaker 1: would come and I would grew up in DC and
Speaker 1: you know, they talked to us. And then by the
Speaker 1: time we got to middle school in high school, were
Speaker 1: a little you know, side out of an officer friendly
Speaker 1: because we had had our experiences at that point, right,
Speaker 1: But we also still under you know, but there was
Speaker 1: still this idea that even beyond that, there was still
Speaker 1: this general idea that if it got down to it,
Speaker 1: I could go I could call the police some you know,
Speaker 1: someone would you know, I could go to someone. Well
Speaker 1: that has that idea is gone, right, And so our girls, now,
Speaker 1: our young people now in general, absolutely if they are
Speaker 1: young people of color, male, female, they are young people
Speaker 1: of color. And then on top of that you add
Speaker 1: black and brown in and then you add on top
Speaker 1: of that social economic challenges. Then absolutely they there's no
Speaker 1: idea of Office of Friendly at all anymore. There's no
Speaker 1: thought in them that that didn't come and it wasn't
Speaker 1: introduced in elementary school, and it hasn't and it won't
Speaker 1: won't be introduced because what they're seeing visually every day
Speaker 1: on social media looks very different. What they're experiencing in
Speaker 1: their communities looks very different. You know. I teach a
Speaker 1: class with my girls around the juvenile justice system, and
Speaker 1: every school class that I go to, I ask them
Speaker 1: who has been impacted either themselves or someone in their
Speaker 1: families by the justice system, and every hand goes up
Speaker 1: in every class. Wow, right, And so that that says
Speaker 1: something about where they where. The idea of who could
Speaker 1: protect them can't and won't. So I have to fear
Speaker 1: the people who have been put into the world that
Speaker 1: are supposed to protect me. I have to fear them.
Speaker 1: I don't have somewhere to go in school, and that
Speaker 1: is my safe space, and you know, but yet I
Speaker 1: don't have somewhere to go to to process my feelings.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you know, when I
Speaker 1: come home and I talk to my parents, there while
Speaker 1: they want to be supportive. They have their own traumas
Speaker 1: around socio economic challenges that's happening. You know, more children
Speaker 1: in the household that they're trying to balance, and they're
Speaker 1: just trying to figure it all out because there's such
Speaker 1: a big difference in the generational divide, right, that wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily there before, But there is a big difference. Again,
Speaker 1: we're not having we didn't have actors school shooting. I'm
Speaker 1: not that much older than I the girls that I served,
Speaker 1: but we don't have that. We didn't have that, So
Speaker 1: how do you have those conversations? Yeah, it's like how
Speaker 1: do you facilitate than conversations on issues that you don't
Speaker 1: have truly an experience or advantage point on, right, Like
Speaker 1: I talk about on willkaf all the time, we talk
Speaker 1: about the night shootings, We talk about actors shooting drills.
Speaker 1: I've never experienced one, so I honestly I don't even
Speaker 1: know what that entails, right, But I think about it
Speaker 1: as this disruption or this bell or whatever sounds you know,
Speaker 1: go off. You don't know in that moment whether this
Speaker 1: is practice or it's actually happening. You go through this
Speaker 1: and then you're supposed to sit back down and learn
Speaker 1: exactly so that to me is already like you've created
Speaker 1: this experience that induces anxiety, then you don't have anything
Speaker 1: that brings that level of anxiety back down. And we're
Speaker 1: just supposed to ask these young people who are still
Speaker 1: learning how to regulate their emotions as their aging to
Speaker 1: then be able to just go right back to functioning.
Speaker 1: What number were we on? Like? What problem was I
Speaker 1: trying to solve? So I think about the ways in
Speaker 1: which the people Dawn who are creating education policy, which
Speaker 1: is something that I went to work on Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: to do, us to try and create education policy from
Speaker 1: the vantage point of an actual teacher, which I was,
Speaker 1: and recognize that the people who are doing this haven't
Speaker 1: been in a classroom in fifty years. Do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? Like, they have not been in a
Speaker 1: classroom in fifty years. And you don't have to have
Speaker 1: an education degree in order to make policy around education.
Speaker 1: Let's not forget that party. And you don't have to
Speaker 1: have a child development degree, which is absolutely wild. But
Speaker 1: how do you with empower her? How do you deal
Speaker 1: with a society a government that really does not put
Speaker 1: any emphasis on anything other than teaching kids their ABC's.
Speaker 1: And yet we know that schools in many ways should
Speaker 1: be the community focal point, right and a place of
Speaker 1: safety and healing and learning not only for the child
Speaker 1: but of their caregivers and their parents, and we do
Speaker 1: the exact opposite. Yeah, And I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that I want to also just quickly say is
Speaker 1: that often, you know, as adults, we expect that we're
Speaker 1: going to have the answers, but we don't in this
Speaker 1: situation when now young people come to us and ask
Speaker 1: these questions, we don't have answers. And that's some part
Speaker 1: of why there's a fear to even have those conversations
Speaker 1: with them, because you have these conversations and then where
Speaker 1: do we go. I don't have an answer for you.
Speaker 1: I don't have a solution, and so there's a fear
Speaker 1: to even have those conversations. And what we're seeing in
Speaker 1: policymakers now is because there's such a fear of that
Speaker 1: that they're saying, we just don't talk about it, don't
Speaker 1: talk about all these things that young people want to
Speaker 1: explore because we don't know how to, you know, we're
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with them, right, And so you know what we
Speaker 1: do and empower her Institute. We are a nonprofit organization
Speaker 1: based in Los Angeles County. We serve a thousand girls
Speaker 1: a year. We start with them from seventh grade through
Speaker 1: twelfth grade, and we are actually the only gender responsive
Speaker 1: non organization in LA that provides a social emotional learning
Speaker 1: course during the school day. We are fully integrated into
Speaker 1: the school day. We work with Title one schools, which
Speaker 1: for those who don't know, our schools that are that
Speaker 1: have at least sixty percent of the young people who
Speaker 1: attend are qualified for free or reduced lunch. When we
Speaker 1: only work with bipop girls. And so we do a
Speaker 1: social emotional learning and a skills based learning course that happens.
Speaker 1: And then in addition to that, part of the course
Speaker 1: is mentoring and so they actually get monthly mentoring in
Speaker 1: addition to that by adult women. And our whole goal
Speaker 1: is to help them deal with the muck of being
Speaker 1: a team and processing all of that in order to
Speaker 1: support them to become career in college ready. See, we
Speaker 1: go to college, we go to school, and we say
Speaker 1: this is all about career in college readiness, right, But
Speaker 1: we miss the social emotional component. We miss the trauma
Speaker 1: that young people are experiencing that make it difficult for
Speaker 1: them to even concentrate on anything that has to do
Speaker 1: with career or college or anything else. And so what
Speaker 1: we do is we look at it from that perspective.
Speaker 1: We're looking at it from a lens of we've got
Speaker 1: to support you in the trauma in addition to supporting
Speaker 1: you with developing those skills and those resources and the
Speaker 1: access so that you can become a college and career ready.
Speaker 1: Our ultimate goal is to break generational cycles of poverty,
Speaker 1: and we understand what that means. We understand that we
Speaker 1: take a social justice lens to this work. We are,
Speaker 1: you know, we take a where we're constantly looking at
Speaker 1: gender and race and the sort of levels of that
Speaker 1: in working with our girls, and so we don't just
Speaker 1: have conversations about how to go how to prepare a resume,
Speaker 1: and how to behave in your first day of work,
Speaker 1: but we have conversations in addition to that about microaggressions
Speaker 1: and man splaining in the workplace right and in the school,
Speaker 1: and how to negotiate those situations and how to navigate
Speaker 1: those situations. So those are the kinds of conversations that
Speaker 1: we have when we talk about a budget, we're not
Speaker 1: just doing financial literacy from a universal perspective, but we
Speaker 1: talk about what does it sound like in your household
Speaker 1: when you talk about money, when parents, when you hear
Speaker 1: your parents talk about it, what does it sound like?
Speaker 1: Because it sounds very different in a household that's financially
Speaker 1: is challenged and struggling than it does in one that
Speaker 1: has a lot of money, right, And so we have
Speaker 1: those conversations and as we continue with them, we have
Speaker 1: conversations about how to prepare what financial wealth looks like,
Speaker 1: and how what generational wealth looks like. And they start
Speaker 1: learning about investments and things of that sort, and they
Speaker 1: actually get money to buy their first piece of stock
Speaker 1: by the time there in the twelfth thirteen. So that's
Speaker 1: the kind of way that we do it. So we
Speaker 1: really are talking about how to handle your emotions, how
Speaker 1: to deal with the muck of that. We talk about that,
Speaker 1: we talk about sex, we talk about just the fact
Speaker 1: that as you get older, from seven through twelfth grade,
Speaker 1: it's a whole bunch of stuff that comes with that.
Speaker 1: People forget that post traumatic stress. There have been studies
Speaker 1: that have shown that young people who live in violent
Speaker 1: communities have the same response level, chemical response level, and
Speaker 1: emotional response level as those who have gone to war,
Speaker 1: And so we forget that post traumatic stress is something
Speaker 1: that is not just for war heroes, but it's also
Speaker 1: something that young people who live in violent communities experience
Speaker 1: every day and they are they continue to experience. It's
Speaker 1: a trauma and so we have to have those conversations
Speaker 1: with them as well. And so that's who we are.
Speaker 1: That's what we do with our girls. And because we
Speaker 1: do it on a weekly basis, it's an hour course
Speaker 1: for our middle schoolers, and then when our high schoolers
Speaker 1: they take an hour course twice a week. Middle schoolers
Speaker 1: taken it once a week for the entire school year.
Speaker 1: And then in addition to that, they are getting social
Speaker 1: justice esteem support. And we're the only ones in the
Speaker 1: country that are combining that together to do that kind
Speaker 1: of work and to do these really cool, cool and
Speaker 1: awesome like summer camps that no one else is doing
Speaker 1: with our girls where they train as marine biologists. And
Speaker 1: you know, I got these are middle schoolers that are
Speaker 1: training as marine biologists and their training and getting a
Speaker 1: scuba diving certifications and things of that sort. Middle schoolers
Speaker 1: black and brown girls. And again that goes back to
Speaker 1: also the social emotional learning component because they get to
Speaker 1: be in a space where they're jumping in the water
Speaker 1: and everybody's hair looks the same yea, So nobody's questioning
Speaker 1: that it and thinking about that, right, And so we
Speaker 1: create those immersive experiences for them as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: with that, it allows us to really help our girls
Speaker 1: address the challenges that our schools aren't able to. It's
Speaker 1: not that our school principles don't want to, they don't
Speaker 1: have its budgets to do so, they don't have the resources. Yeah, Dawn,
Speaker 1: every bit of your institute sounds like something that I
Speaker 1: would love to see nationalize. I'd love to see it
Speaker 1: in every single school district across the country with a
Speaker 1: significant BIPOC student body that needs this right. You know,
Speaker 1: at a time, particularly when we hear about black curriculum
Speaker 1: being banned, and black sororities and fraternities being banned, and
Speaker 1: you know, anything that is considered inclusive and equitable being
Speaker 1: banned in states, it is really heartening to hear that
Speaker 1: an organization like yours exists and is doing the work
Speaker 1: to create you know, a powerful healed generation of young
Speaker 1: BIPOC women. Before I let you go, please do tell
Speaker 1: the woke f audience how they could learn more and
Speaker 1: get involved with empower her. Yes, definitely. Let me say
Speaker 1: that one hundred percent of the girls that we work
Speaker 1: with actually in the middle schools matriculate into high school
Speaker 1: and one hundred percent about high schoolers if they continue
Speaker 1: with us through the twelfth grade, graduate and are accepted
Speaker 1: in the college. An eighty nine percent of the girls
Speaker 1: who we work with report having an increase of self
Speaker 1: confidence and a decrease is significant decrease in trauma and
Speaker 1: and suicidal ideation in our program. So the program and
Speaker 1: it works, right, Yeah, And I think that's important before
Speaker 1: we say, you know, get involved, like I want to
Speaker 1: show and say that we have statistics that show that
Speaker 1: our work works. You know. The best way to get involved.
Speaker 1: We are a nonprofit organization and so all of what
Speaker 1: we do we have to fundraise for. And so you
Speaker 1: can always make a donation to the organization. If you're
Speaker 1: not in the lam even if you are in LA
Speaker 1: please make a donation. But if you are in the
Speaker 1: LA County and would like to volunteer as a mentor,
Speaker 1: we're looking for women who are twenty one and over
Speaker 1: who are interested in becoming volunteering as a mentor. It's
Speaker 1: two hours of your time once a month. You go
Speaker 1: to a school and you get a group of girls
Speaker 1: who you talk with and you get to explain your
Speaker 1: exp is. They ask questions of you, and you ask
Speaker 1: questions of them, and you learn from one another. And
Speaker 1: then there's also ways to get involved. And we are
Speaker 1: always looking for companies who want to take on a
Speaker 1: high school girl to actually work with them for the
Speaker 1: summer so that they can make money and take these
Speaker 1: skills and apply them. And so it's a four week
Speaker 1: program and you pay them and we actually pay our
Speaker 1: kids above minimal wage to go and work for four
Speaker 1: weeks in the summer so they can get those experiences.
Speaker 1: We teach them the skills, but then we want them
Speaker 1: to apply those skills. And so those are some key
Speaker 1: ways to get involved with our organization. John Brown, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for the work that you are doing
Speaker 1: for bringing a little bit of light to will get
Speaker 1: off on a little bit of hopefulness. With organizations like yours,
Speaker 1: we will see some significant change. So I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1: And folks check out empower her institute. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: thank you. That is it for me today. Dear friends
Speaker 1: on Woke a f as always power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people power, get woke and stay
Speaker 1: woke as fuck.