Cherished Community Warrior,
Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday and my heart is filled with gratitude. Gratitude for our founder’s 11 years of building this organization from the ground up. Gratitude for each and every person who cleaned out their closets so that I could have a prom dress my senior year. Yet, I’ve received so much more than just a dress from Athena’s Warehouse, I’ve also found sisterhood. I’ve found it in the friendships I deepened with Iris & Haja (2 of my high school besties who rolled their eyes with me at the cheesy “Be Awesome, Be Aware” workshops in 2012, I found sisterhood in mentoring and being mentored by Bibi & Noemi (1 grade below- received the scholarship from AW), I found sisterhood in forming my board of directors (a pack of fierce she-wolves indeed), and every day I’m constantly finding sisterhood in the little glistening hope filled eyes of the young women we serve.
I invite you to look back with me on this organization’s 14 years of service. I’ll direct your attention to my reflection on my experiences with the workshops that I wrote at 18 years old:
“The positive self-image workshop where we learned a dance routine, healthy eating tips, and how to boost our self esteem helped me to see the empowerment of women a lot differently. I finally saw a women's empowerment program that placed the responsibility of empowerment on the individual. I remember we were told to dwell on the positive and not the negative, which was something I struggled with, but when I needed a boost I tried to remember something positive and it has helped me through my days. The health tips also made me see the importance of exercise, for more than just weight loss. Exercise is about feeling good inside and out. I learned that from the workshop, because I definitely wasn't the best dancer, but I felt accomplished when I challenged myself, and when I went for a run the other day after a stressful day I sweated out the strain of the day and cooled down with some calming yoga. I learned that exercise is a reward and a positive energy booster.
The self-awareness, self defense, and violence awareness workshop was very informational. I was so surprised to find that so many women were abused so violently all over the United States, in just a year. It was saddening and eye opening. I learned how to better protect myself and to identify when I'm in a dangerous situation. A friend's mother was in an abusive situation and because of the workshop we were able to make appropriate changes in her life. From this workshop I learned the importance of protecting the body and the mind. Protecting my mind by never feeling I deserve someone treating me badly and protecting my body by being aware of warning signs.
The Athena's Warehouse workshops have shown me that empowerment comes from within. At the end of the day there is no one to blame and nothing negative to dwell on because I am responsible for making decisions that I can be proud of. I have learned that it is necessary to stand together as women and to support each other because sometimes it's hard for us to look in the mirror and see what our sisters see in us. To be a young woman is a privilege and a great responsibility. Because of these workshops I can be more confident in myself, and empower everyone around me because I know together we are stronger than we ever imagined we could be.”
For 14 years we have shown youth that they must ignite the fire burning brightly within them by sharpening their mind, body, and spirit in order to achieve their goals to become their own vision of success. Within everyone is a glimmer of something greater than just themselves and we work to help young women in particular recognize this glimmer within. Because when women are healed our entire community is healed for generations and generations. Women are the start and end of every part of the human life cycle yet are still treated globally as second class citizens.
I, myself, remember distinctly the pressure of my gender and its status as 2nd rank. I knew that my duty to marry and bear children came before my happiness. I knew that I was not only expected to marry but to marry a man with resources and I didn’t know what resources were but I was ALSO expected to have them myself. In order to attract such a man I must be educated, well spoken, well read, interesting, and talented. I remember feeling like no one was talking about it, no one was talking about these unsaid but very LOUD expectations of a “woman.” I could hear it ticking, this biological clock they all kept reminding me about as I entered college as the 1st of my mother’s children to graduate from high school. I could hear the ticking when I would tell other women that I wanted to pursue medicine then they would ask if I wanted children, I would say, “Yes!” happily with no idea of the cost of raising a child nor the abysmal maternal mortality rate for black women in my home state of Georgia. They would purse their lips and sometimes even roll their eyes and say, “Well you know medical school takes a long time, so really you need to choose whether you’ll have a family or be a doctor.”
It was so strange that we were expected to make such an impossible decision, I was 19 years old. It was strange but what was stranger was that I could only think of 1 woman and her sisters who HAD openly talked about these expectations! They talked to me about loving myself first, they talked to me about yoga, and meditation. They told me that I was the author of my own destiny and those women are Bee & her sisters. They were the only women willing to have the conversation to challenge the narratives that they themselves were fighting, daily.
Obviously, I’m not a doctor. I had to become a different kind of healer after my family was gentrified out of our home of 15 years during my junior year of college. Hundreds of residents who had all lived in this complex suddenly received notice that the property had been acquired by a new company and that we had less than a month to find another place to live. I'll never forget using broken Spanish to try and explain to my neighbors that they should get their deposit back. It was then that I joined the movement for housing justice and began attending marches against predatory landlord practices and cruelty in evictions (there is no law in GA against evicting in extreme weather.) In 2017, my colleagues and I co-founded Vecinos Buford Hwy & started to organize residents in apartment complexes from Brookhaven to Dunwoody. I knew our rag-tag team of millennials had what it took to start a nonprofit because of my mentor Bee Nguyen who had founded Athena's Warehouse. Knowing that Bee had created a nonprofit simply because she wanted to spread the joy of sisterhood made me realize that I could be the catalyst for change that my community needed.
Well so that’s me, that’s how our organization has become one of the select few organization’s globally who has turned the work over to the community it serves. We are one of the few organizations who survived the financial crisis of the Covid-19 Pandemic & shutdowns. We are the one of the few organizations still fighting for women to have whatever they need to free.
Stand with girls: https://bit.ly/23awgiving
We are looking for warriors who will commit to a monthly gift of any amount. With 14 people supporting us with $14/month for a year we can raise $2,352. With 140 people supporting at $14/month we can raise $23,520 annually! No matter the level of support just know that local businesses are matching! Join the live event on 6pm on LinkedIn to see who’s matching your gift today!
Thank you so much.
In solidarity,
Dia Parker
Executive Director
