ROHW 2020 Announcement of Funds Donated to Black Women’s Blueprint (Beneficiary)
Press Release – ROHW 2020 Announcement of Funds Donated to Black Women’s Blueprint (Beneficiary)
Contacts:
Vice-President of Community Relations, Yaritza Gonzalez – Community@omegaphibeta.org
Director of Philanthropy, Natalie Yaipen – Philanthropy@omegaphibeta.org
In 2011 Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. launched the Ray of Hope Walk Initiative (ROHI) in direct response to its national philanthropy, Raising Awareness of Violence Against Women. The goal of ROHI was to mobilize our communities to raise funds for community organizations whose work aligned with our mission and philanthropy. The following year, 2012, what began as a benefit concert transformed into a call to action to educate, empower, and mobilize our communities to rise up and support survivors of violence; violence caused by institutions and structures of oppression and intimate partner relationships, this became the Ray of Hope Walk (ROHW). Fast forward to 2020, nine years after the first ROHW, our movement grew. We expanded from New York City to Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles and began to focus our work on centering the inherent value of Black women and girls’ lives.
Our partnership with Black Women’s Blueprint has been years in the making. Many ROHW organizers have created powerful relationships with organizers at Black Women’s Blueprint. Many of us have attended the March for Black Women Lives. Some of us have learned and uncovered new parts of our identities and activism in the hallways of their museum and, now, many of us are working closely with them to bring necessary support to Black women, girls, and community members. The work that Black Women’s Blueprint does reminds us that the time to rise up with Black women and girls is always NOW. They remind us that in our work to raise awareness of violence against women we have to address the varying ways that violence is materialized and experienced in order to create intentional efforts to address them. As such, it is clear that they are a powerful organization and we are honored to be organizing with them. This brings us to our most recent Ray of Hope Walk.
In 2020, we worked with Black Women’s Blueprint to call attention to the institutional, systemic, and interpersonal forms of violence that Black women and girls are subjected to. This meant focusing our organizing efforts on supporting their mutual aid efforts by way of the Sistas Vans mobilizing unit and it has also meant transitioning our annual Ray of Hope Walk to a full weekend of activism; a weekend where we can build community with other Black women and comrades; a weekend where we rise up in solidarity and participate in community education; a weekend where we focus our efforts on raising monetary funds to sustain Black Women’s Blueprint; and a weekend where we can take time to celebrate the collective power of Black women and girls. Our decision to transition our annual Ray of Hope Walk was rooted in consciousness and respect for our communities and our belief that it is important to make this work as accessible as possible for all people in our movement. In response to COVID-19, to ensure folks’ safety and social distancing, the physical walk transformed into a virtual weekend of activism. It was a weekend that expanded across the country and grew into a beautiful vision of community strength.
As our first-ever virtual weekend of activism, our 2020 ROHW began with a panel with community organizers from LA, NYC, and Chicago and a community discussion on what it means to facilitate and practice community care without the state and what the immediate and tangible steps community members can take to not only address state-sanctioned violence but organize against it and work towards collective liberation. Following our community panel on Friday, Saturday we hosted a number of workshops that were facilitated by artists and organizers from across the country. The workshops ranged from interactive designing workshops that allowed participants to explore how design work and visual art can be used as a tool for popular education and advanced messaging centered on our collective liberation, to workshops on the utility of Hip-Hop as a genre for liberation for young people. We then closed out our weekend with two workshops focused on collective wellbeing where community members had the opportunity to choose from two powerful workshops: one focused on herbal steaming as a practice of womb healing and discussing reproductive health through doula work, and a workshop focused on the utility of collective care as a way to manage our stress in a time period of COVID-19.
In addition to these intentional and powerful workshops, over the course of the weekend, we invited community members to participate in Miles for Hope, a challenge where individuals could run/walk/bike/drive any number of miles they are able to in celebration of our annual event.
As we continue to organize our communities and create new and powerful ways to support survivors of gender and sexual violence, we are excited for the work already done in the last year with Black Women’s Blueprint. Their incredible commitment to end violence against women through their research, historical documentation, trauma-informed and survivor-centered mobile healing unit, emergency funds program, and healing and counseling program inspired our sisters and we are honored to have had the opportunity to learn from them, and today we are excited to announce that…
… in 2020, we raised $15,000 for Black Women’s Blueprint through the Ray of Hope Walk (ROHW) to End Violence Against Women!
This incredible feat has been a wonderful celebration. We are incredibly grateful to our community who has been incredibly supportive and has allowed us to raise more funds than we have ever raised during the first year of a beneficiary partnership. When we decided to transition from an in-person event to a virtual weekend of activism we were anxious for the possibilities and today, we are more than grateful for the community support! The Ray of Hope Walk will continue to challenge our communities to be a part of this movement; working with powerful organizations such as Black Women’s Blueprint, towards a world that is safe, equitable, and nurturing for all women and girls. A world where all forms of violence against women are non-existent. We are excited to wrap up the 9th year of Ray of Hope Walk and embark on this next year with the intention, love, and strategy needed to continue to drive this initiative!
We give thanks to our powerful ROHW 2020 Committee Members and the entire organizing team. This work could not have been done without them and because of them, we have made ROHW herstory!
New York Committee Members: Maria Rosa, Kinyanna Evans, Brenda Lopez, Stephanie Rivera, Michelina Ferrara, Sam Herrera, Janitza Otero, Abigail Crespo, Cindy Zhunio.
Chicago Committee Members: Nadia Estrada, Amelia Najera, Joselin Lucas, Jennifer Rivera, Kayla Hawthorne, Ozmara Arteaga.
Atlanta Committee Members: Virginia Clark, Audri Flores, Carolina Fernandez, Cristine Contreras, Diana Cruz, Leah Savary, Sherlyn Avalos, Zahara White.
Los Angeles Committee Members: Samantha Huerta, Athina Cuevas, Cassandra Padilla, Elizabeth Guzman, Adriana Embus, Cindy Cox Uncles, Jessica Cardoza, Karen Coronel.
National Organizing Team: Sydney Tomasko (2020 Philanthropy Intern), Brenda Lopez (former Director of Philanthropy & Vice President of Community Relations), Penelope Ramirez (2019 + 2020 Director of Philanthropy), Yartiza Gonzalez (Vice President of Community Relations).