As many of you know, Kelly Fair was an ambassador for the Chicago Community Trust at the On the Table Discussion Tuesday evening. We had our discussion with a diverse group of people from community service members (social workers, school counselors, etc), teachers, businessmen, and even officers of the court. She lead her topic, Investing in the Future of Black Girls, with inspiring community leaders to teach them that everyday citizens are agents of change. Kelly Fair has often focused “on the other side of the crisis”. Black girls are living and developing in the same communities as black boys, yet they do not receive as much attention. Their fight is an invisible one. Polished Pebbles, Kelly Fair, and On the Table 2015 brought a voice to that struggle.
Ideally, the conversation Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected engenders within communities and among philanthropists, policy makers, stakeholders, and advocates will lead to the inclusion of girls in efforts to address school discipline, push-out, and the pathways to incarceration, poverty, and low-wage work. We are especially hopeful that ongoing efforts to resolve the crisis facing boys of color will open up opportunities to examine the challenges facing their female counterparts.
Crenshaw and Kelly Fair agree on multiple points. Like Crenshaw, Fair believes more research, media, and communities need to focus on young, African-American women. From sex trafficking to school discipline, our girls are in danger in their very communities. As local community leaders, you are able to make changes, to be a voice for this invisible fight! We want to empower you to stand up for your community, for your young, black girls. For all of those who already have, thank you for your courage, for all of those who have yet to do so, thank you for reading our message. We want to continue our discussions! Comment, share, and spark conversation with those around you. Because together she will shine!
From Polished Pebbles and Kelly Fair, thank you to all who attended Polished Pebbles facilitated On the Table discussion. We appreciate your voice, heart, and presence. Thank you to Chicago Community Trust for allowing us to share this conversation with our community.
If you don’t already know, Kelly Fair will be serving as an ambassador for the Chicago Community Trust “On the Table” discussions!
I’m Kelly Fair and I’m the founder of Polished Pebbles Girls Mentoring Program. Founded in 2009, Polished Pebbles Girls Mentoring Program has been intimately involved in developing and implementing successful youth development programs. I’m motivated to continue my work in mentoring, because I’m a successful byproduct of strong Chicago-based youth mentoring and job readiness initiatives. So, I know personally that mentoring works, which is why am excited every time a new company jumps on board to providing career-related mentoring to our girls.
Watch this video to learn more about Kelly Fair and Polished Pebbles’ role at “On the Table”:
A Charm City girl in the Windy City, L’Oreal Thompson Payton is a professional storyteller with a penchant for people and a passion for purple. When she’s not busy writing, L’Oreal enjoys reading, dancing and devouring delicious cupcakes. Follow L’Oreal on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and visit her blog at LTintheCity.com.
How did you first get involved with Polished Pebbles?
I started volunteering with Polished Pebbles in January 2014. I had recently moved to Chicago and I desperately wanted to “give back” to the community. Helping young girls, especially young Black girls, has always been a passion of mine and I wanted to get involved with an organization that did just that. I came across Polished Pebbles in a Google search and, coincidentally, was later introduced to the founder, Kelly Fair, in my previous position as the Digital Content Editor for JET magazine. I recall attending the Second Saturday program that January (it was a Zumba class) and immediately falling in love with the program and the girls.
What is your role as a mentor for youth, primarily young, black girls, in your community?
As a mentor, my primary goal is to serve as a positive role model for young Black girls in the community. I’m always available to help and offer advice and really just be their biggest cheerleader. We all need someone in our corner cheering us on and shouting, “You can do it!” I believe in our girls and I want to be an example to them that anything is possible. I want them to see what I’ve accomplished and know that they can do it, too.
Who are the stand-out mentors in your life?
Wow, I have so many! First and foremost, my mom has constantly demonstrated what it means to be an upstanding daughter, wife, mother, business woman and woman of God. She is my rock.
Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to have several female editors who’ve taken me under their wings. Because of those editors, I’ve learned valuable life and career skills that I firmly believe have contributed to my overall success. I simply wouldn’t be here without the wonderful women (and loving men) in my life.
What ignited your passion for giving back to the community?
In middle school, I was constantly bullied for being smart (I skipped a grade), talking “White,” and for being ugly. There were nights when I prayed to God to make me White so I would be more beautiful. I literally hated the color of my skin and felt so unworthy. As an adult, I’ve realized I’m probably not the only girl who’s ever felt this way and it’s my personal mission to help young girls so hopefully they never have to feel that way.
How do you define philanthropy? How do you engage with it?
The Greek definition of philanthropy is “love of humanity.” For the most part, I think people typically equate philanthropy with rich people who donate a lot of money to a good cause. So I don’t consider myself a philanthropist in that sense of the word, but rather the original Greek version: I have a love of helping young girls.
There are plenty of ways to make a difference–whether it’s donating your time, money and/or talent; however, I do believe it’s important to “put your money where your mouth is,” which is why I contribute to Polished Pebbles on a regular basis. It’s an organization I truly believe in so I want to invest in our girls and help them succeed.
What is one barrier affecting young, black girls you have identified? Any solutions?
Nowadays, there are so many programs, such as My Brother’s Keeper, dedicated to helping young Black men, which is both awesome and necessary. But what about the girls? They live in the same neighborhoods as these young men, but it seems as though their needs and issues are often overlooked. I think programs like Polished Pebbles are part of the solution, but we can’t do it alone.
We need big companies to make an investment and show are girls they are valuable and worthy. For example, Google donated $190,000 to Black Girls Code last year…that’s a huge step in the right direction and other companies should follow in their footsteps. But the real work starts at home with positive role models in the community leading the way.
Do you have any final thoughts for us?
My hope is that every young Black girl will grow up knowing she is beautiful and worthy. I want each of them to feel empowered to accomplish their dreams and goals.
Last week we shared with you black women who made herstory. Today, we want you to know women who are making herstory! These black women will inspire you to put your best foot forward. You could even raise your daughter to be like one of theseheroins, these herstory-makers!
Paulette Brown, the first black female president of the American Bar Association.
Sonya Smith, the first African-American female to earn a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the University of Virginia.
Shonda Rimes, first black woman to create some Top 10 network TV series, such as Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal.
Mo’Ne Davis, the first female pitcher to win a Little League Series–remember, “throw like a girl”!
Michelle Obama, does she need a caption? No.
Keke Palmer, the first African-American woman to play Cinderella on Broadway.
Carole Simpson, the first woman to broadcast radio news in Chicago.
Mellody Hobson, one of the most powerful black female business women. She is the current Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dreamworks Animation.
Lupita Nyong’o, the first black spokeswoman for Lancome.
Cameka Smith is the founder of BOSS Network, “Bringing Out Successful Sisters”. With a Master’s in Education, Cameka has dedicated herself to supporting the entrepreneurial spirit in women. As BOSS Network so succinctly and powerfully describes their founder, “Speaker, trainer, and award-winning entrepreneur…BOSS Network has evolved into a go-to resource for companies seeking female influencers as their target market. A one-stop-shop for career and entrepreneurial minded women”.
What Is She Proud Of?
Cameka Smith finds pride in her educational achievement. Coming from “an environment where most of my peers were looked at as a statistic”, her MA in Education helps her to work for change in her community! During her teaching career, she found enjoyment in working with at-risk youth. When her students follow their dreams she is able to see the impact she has had–their successes become her successes. This has been her constant reward. Her transition into BOSS Network only added to her positive influence in her community. Cameka is proud to be seen as an expert or industry influencer in her field.
Who Have Been Her Mentors, Her Motivators?
Cameka Smith sees the “every day women in her life”, her mother and aunts, as her greatest motivators. She came from a big, connected, and loving family that always maintained faith and commitment to one another and community. Seeing their commitment and love inspired her to maintain the same values. They have encouraged her to have a dedication to service and helping others. Cameka acknowledges her teachers, professors, and counselors who encouraged her to attain her Masters. Her education has truly helped her get to where she is today. The very women she works with through the BOSS Network are her mentors. They inspire her to keep working harder, to be creative.
Does She Think She’s A Mentor? …Because We Sure Do!
Cameka Smith first saw herself as a mentor when she began her career in education. She saw the need to provide positive role models for her students and other youth, so she acted! She began to create mentor programs for students. She wanted to showcase young professionals; let them “see what they can become” from “all walks of life”. She encourages youth, especially young girls, to join mentoring programs and to push their future visions. Cameka sees her entire career as building up youth into confident, successful young adults. We are thankful for Cameka and her work!
Now, What Does She Hope To See From Her Community?
Cameka reminds us all that “if you have lived on this earth, then you have something that you’ve been through…that you can share with another person”. So, do just that! She would like to see more community involvement in mentoring programs for youth (at Polished Pebbles, we agree!). Cameka sees women of color as essential contirbuters to their communities because they are natural role models and leaders. Cameka wants me to remind readers that for her, it was the “everyday women” who had the greatest impact on her. Which means there is nothing standing in your way!
People need hope, and sometimes we forget that hope exists within all of us. Mentors can be the spark that ignites the fire. Thank you Cameka for sharing this message with us!
From KellyFairtheMentor and Polished Pebbles, we want to say MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS! May the holidays be a blessing to you and yours. Thank you for all that you do to support our girls!
If you would like to give a little gift this holiday season, consider donating to Polished Pebbles. It can be a one time, monthly, or annual donation. The upcoming 2015 is sure to be filled with many more activities and programs to enrich the lives of our girls. We would love your support! Donate here…
For those who need a little refresher on what Polished Pebbles does for our community:
Polished Pebbles (est. 2009) is a Chicago-based, nonprofit organization that mentors girls ages 7-17 on the effective life skill of communication. We help girls to become effective communicators at home, school, and the future workplace! We have worked with over 400+ volunteer mentors who have helped 1000 girls via 30 program sites to solve their problems rationally as opposed to retaliating and develop the confidence to: speak up in class, join groups and seek leadership positions, communicate effectively and respectfully with adults, have peaceful interactions with their peers, and prepare for future careers.
We have had 30 Chicagoland sites where we host our programs, including partnerships with Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Housing Authority, and University of Chicago Charter Schools.
We have 18 companies we partner with for 50+ job shadowing opportunities, including Bloomingdales, Microsoft Store, Chicago Sky, and Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Illinois.
For Polished Pebbles to keep supporting our girls, we need your help! Consider a one-time, monthly, or annual donation. Click here to support Polished Pebbles!
This week we are throwing it back to 2013! A little reminiscing at the end of the year is the perfect way to remind us why we do what we do. Polished Pebbles has seen great growth in the last 5 years. We have now mentored over 1,000 girls and serve 30 sites in Chicago! To think we used to be small. During this exciting time it can be easy to get swept up in the numbers and forget about our individual impact. To each girl that goes through Polished Pebbles program, the experience is different. Although we have our mission of installing positive values, effective communication strategies, and confidence in our girls, they all take a different path. Each girl comes through our program with their own unique background and personality; making sure our work is never dull!
Now, let’s hear from a Polished Pebbles alum, Pertesha, as she shares her own Polished Pebbles story:
Polished Pebbles has been working hard to ensure that all the girls that go through our program have such a positive experience. Here’s an infographic to let you know how we’ve been doing:
Like what you’ve heard and read? Consider donating to Polished Pebbles to keep our program running strong, and our mission! With your help, small or large, Polished Pebbles will have a bright future! And together she will shine!
Click here to make your contribution! Remember, we aren’t just hoping for monetary support. If you have time, consider being a volunteer or mentor. Or, share your voice on our social media sites (including this one)!
How have you seen Polished Pebbles grow this year? What changes would you like to see in the next?
A younger female colleague of mine tagged me in a Facebook post with this video in it. The video is about catcalling in New York City. It was disseminated last week by a group called Hollaback!. Hollaback! is a photoblog and grassroots initiative to raise awareness about and combat street harassment by posting photographs and narrative accounts of individuals’ encounters with offenders. The video shows an actress walking the streets of New York and experiencing sustained catcalls and harassment, including being followed by one man for over five minutes. The video racked up 32 million views, but came under quick scrutiny for featuring mostly men of color. This too was my initial observation and objection to the video as well. My thought was how can you raise awareness about a form of discrimination with a tool that discriminates? Consequently, Hollaback! apologized last week for the suspicious lack of white men shown in the video ( read an article here). Nonetheless, as most social media centered advocacy, the message about combat catcalling definitely started a buzz and lots of dialogue.
I was that girl!
I immediately shared the video with two of the programming coordinators on my staff, and told them that I thought a dialogue about this video was definitely something that I wanted included in our upcoming curriculum with my mentoring program Polished Pebbles Girls Mentoring Program. The video really resonated with me, because in previous years when I worked directly with girls in our after school programs, I held conversations with girls about this very topic. We discussed strategizing safe passage to and from school, and managing the different types of attention that they may get in public from men, desirable or undesirable. I think it’s important conversation to have also tailored with a recognition of appropriate cultural context. I am big on having conversations that address understanding the root, and the reaction, of certain behaviors based on the communities that we serve, that I also happen to be a product of.
The topic of teaching girls to manage this is near and dear to my heart, because it was something I grapled with in my earlier adolescence. I was like many high school students in Chicago, and used public transportation to get to school, but I masterminded different routes to avoid unwanted attention from men, of all ages, on the streets I needed to walk down to get home. Quite frankly, I was just wasn’t mature enough, or experienced as a young woman to really know how to manage the attention and propositions made by some of the men, and distinguish hidden, and obvious, intentions. So, instead of getting off the bus at my street, I tried to avoid as much potential foot traffic as possible, and rode the bus a couple of blocks longer to the final bus terminal. Walking home that way helped me avoid some of the older “dudes” that were constantly outside, and was a much quieter path. However, it was also potentially even more dangerous because it was less traveled by most. And, I was kind of isolating myself, and potentially setting myself up to be more accessible for actual crimes like kidnap, rape, etc. But, as I grew I adapted. I learned to ignore some of the comments, and play like I was hard of hearing, or listening to headphones. I also started using the strategy of looking so intently focused, and a little mean, with my face that it actually turned a lot of them off! LOL! And, then I learned how to be polite, thank them for the complement, and tell them that I already had a boyfriend, and didn’t need any more friends.
My mature shift in perspective.
As I have grown and matured, I’m much more experienced in life and confident in my identity as a woman in my community, and how that may be viewed by others. Part of what helped me get here was being taught long time ago by a mentor of mine on how to view some of those approaches from men, and how to respond to them as well. Linda told me that for many of those men that they may never have encountered a woman like me, and some of their comments were the only methods they knew to attempt to complement me. And, this shift in perspective totally changed the way I approached and reacted to some of those encounters. It took me time and experience to master it, but I now approach and manage those interactions with a spirit of universal love, and you’d be amazed at the kind o reactions that I get. In turn I receive words and acts of kindness, respect, generosity, and genuine well-wishes for my day, my well-being, and my current work with girls. I now see part of my responsibility as a woman, of my stature, is demonstrate love and respect to others no matter what neighborhood, city, or country that I’m traveling through. And, as a strong believer in the “golden rule”, and the “law of attraction, expression of love and respect dominates the majority of my dealings with others.
Despite my shift in perspective, I want to be clear that I’m not condoning disrespect or disregard for others in any form. But, I wanted to present a different viewpoint. Although videos like this one from Hollaback! are effective in getting attention, I want to make sure that as a responsible mentoring community that we always follow-up on “hashtag activisim” with conversations centered on devising practical ways to help address the needs of help girls combat cat-calling and ensure their safety. Below are some tips that I recommend.
What you can do to help your girls!
Create opportunities for girls to have open dialogue on the topic. So, often we don’t have enough forums for adolescent girls to have open discussions on a variety of topics, but especially one’s of this nature. So, if you have a mentoring or youth program, or a teacher, consider making this a news topic to review. Show the students the video and get their reaction. And, even if you are not directly involved in working with youth as a profession, talk about it with your daughters and the girls in your family or daily network. As we develop girls to become advocates we must help them develop their voice by providing opportunities to see expressing their opinion is okay
Create strategies for safe passage to and from school, etc. Talk with your daughters/girls about how they get to and from school, jobs, or other activities. Ask them what buses are they taking. What routes do they take to get home? What streets or alleys are they walking down? Work with them to identify if there is a way for them to organize walking home in groups with responsible friends to increase safety and collective vigilance.
Ask them how their day was. Your girl/daughter may have had an encounter or experience that she needs to discuss or receive some guidance on. But, if we don’t work to create consistent lines of communication with our girls that they know they can trust, they may not share and keep it to themselves.
Create opportunities for authentic dialogue for girls with positive male role models: Far too many of the girls that we serve don’t have consistent relationships with positive role models. So, we work to include male volunteers/mentors within our network as well as women, because having opportunities to connect with positive men who can provide insight and advice on dealing with the men that they encounter is priceless. We hold open forums between our girls and our male volunteers regularly to provide opportunities for girls to hear from men and pose questions and ask for advice.
Let them shadow you for a day at work or running mundane errands: So many of us learn most effectively when we are given visual examples. Letting your girl/daughter/mentee shadow you gives you the opportunity, if youre a woman, to show girls how you carry yourself in professional settings and in about your community as well. She ‘ll see how you talk to people, present yourself, react to others worlds and actions. And, in the car you can share with her you problem solved those situations, analyzed them, and identified any definite threats of danger. Men, it’s important that girls get a chance to spend a day with you as well, because they get to see how you treat other women you encounter. And, they learn from watching you what positive and real caring male interaction looks and feels like.
So, what are some tips or strategies that you use with girls in ensuring safe passage, and dealing with unwanted attention?
This is the first KFair Mentoring Tip in a series of monthly insights to provide guidance and encouragement for mentors and entrepreneurs. To keep with October’s theme of women entrepreneurs, this month’s mentoring tip is about diverse leadership.
“It is important for the leadership of organizations to appropriately reflect the demographics of the population it seeks to serve…and understands the culture, unique pressures and obstacles…”
Kelly Fair with new friends, connections, colleagues, and leaders at Opportunity Collaboration in Ixtapa, Mexico.
As you may know, I spent the last week at an Opportunity Collaboration workshop in Ixtapa, Mexico. The goal of this workshop? To introduce global leaders in social change to one another! The diverse group of people present at this workshop not only led to valuable connections, but also new perspectives, talents, and thought processes we can all learn from.
Again, Williams talks about a similar goal with her call for diversity in thought leadership:
“When combating complex interconnected social problems…leaders are needed from various backgrounds to attack the problem innovatively.”
Her three steps for increasing diversity in leadership roles:
Invest in Talent
Build a Leadership Pipeline
Build Networks across the Sectors–not only across public, private, and non-profit sectors, but sectors of individual identity as well!
Young, African-American girls need to see older, professional women who look like them succeeding in leadership roles! That has been the continuous message this month. By seeing black women as leaders, they will start to see themselves as developing leaders and act as such. You can help support our youth by taking on leadership roles yourselves, or by electing others for leadership positions.
We want you to know L’Oreal Thompson Payton!
Cameka Smith is the founder of BOSS Network, “Bringing Out Successful Sisters”. With a Master’s in Education, Cameka has dedicated herself to supporting the entrepreneurial spirit in women. As BOSS Network so succinctly and powerfully describes their founder, “Speaker, trainer, and award-winning entrepreneur…BOSS Network has evolved into a go-to resource for companies seeking female influencers as their target market. A one-stop-shop for career and entrepreneurial minded women”.
