Affect Real Change, Inc

From body image, to hair, to skin color - African American girls experience distinct challenges navigating adolescence in a world obsessed with image. This is compounded when targeted for the very things that make up who we are. Jokes and bullying about everything from nappy hair to 'being cute for a dark girl' are common. Emotional and physical violence are often minimized or swept under the rug.

We are organizing this rally and march to bring awareness to the issues so many of us face and to demonstrate that we are not alone and won't be disappeared. We love and support each other and are coming together to celebrate all the unique characteristics that make us beautiful. If you can't make it, make sure 5 others can. Also, please contribute to our fundraiser so we can make this a powerful Black Girl Magic event!

This event is planned BY and FOR black girls based on our experiences. Will you show support?

Kanju Girls is a fiscally sponsored program of the nonprofit Affect Real Change, Inc. Any donation will help make an impact. Thank you in advance for your contribution to this cause!

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HERE'S SOME BACKGROUND ON THIS GROUP:

Kanju first began when a 10 year old Luna Ekundayo created a group to intentionally address the challenges that were occuring with girls in her 5th/6th grade combination classroom at Mills College Children's school. Luna saw a need for deep relationship building in order to create a climate of trust and friendship in order to counter the gossip, cliches, and alienation that had become a cycle with her classmates. She approached the school principal to create a different approach for dealing with the challenges and the project received the greenlight.   

Luna restructured the group with a focus on relationship building through games, sharing food, and discussion versus focusing on the conflicts that had happened during the week. It was a huge success. The connections built through this new way of engaging went a long way toward resolving issues that came up in the future and in fact, there were fewer incidents as a result. 

After moving from elementary to middle school, the group ended, but conversations with a new group of girls revealed commonalities: colorism, sexual harassment and low self esteem consistently came up as issues girls were wrestling with. Luna wanted to see positive reflections of African American girls highlighted in her community to counteract all the negative messaging on television, movies, magazines, the news as well as the highlight reels of so many on social media.

After experiencing, and hearing about several violent incidents on African American girls around the East Bay, Luna, now 14 years-old created Kanju - a member organization where girls come together throughout the year to discuss their experiences in order to find solutions - together.  The core planning group continued to grow and meets weekly to plan events, outings, and socialize. To learn more, please find us online at BlackGirlsMarch.com