Dear Community Partners and Allies:

WLP needs your urgent help. Like so many Black and BIPOC organizations across the nation, our small CBO has been devastated by Trump's defunding of racial, gender and social justice programming for Black women, girls, and LGBTQ+ communities. As a result of these attacks on vital resources, we have had to downsize staff and will potentially have to scale back programming.

For over twenty years, the Women's Leadership Project (WLP) has provided Black feminist mentoring, civic engagement, and advocacy for Black girls, girls of color, and queer youth. Over the past seven years, we have convened Future of Feminism conferences, launched four Black LGBTQ+ youth retreats and LGBTQI+ Youth of Color institutes, published youth blogs and articles, and provided weekly in-class peer prevention education workshops and outreach on mental health, public policy, Black feminist literature, reproductive justice, domestic and intimate partner violence, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and creating safe spaces for BIPOC LGBTQIA+ youth in our partner South L.A. high schools. In 2020, after our high school students surveyed Black girl sexual and domestic violence survivors in South L.A., we created the #Standing4BlackGirls task force, which focuses on pressing policymakers to provide mental health, educational, and job resources for Black women and girl violence survivors.

One of our core initiatives in this effort has been the #Standing4BlackGirls Wellness initiative, which we piloted with the Inglewood-based Open Paths Counseling Center in 2021. The initiative provides free culturally responsive, humanistic, and queer affirming individual therapy to South L.A. Black and BIPOC girls and women and gender expansive youth. We initially funded the pilot with a grant from the California Black Freedom Fund. Our youth also launched the Virtual Homegirl podcast, which focuses on Black and Latina young women’s perspectives navigating college and careers, mental health challenges, media representations of queer people of color, and creating healthy relationships.

The generous support of donors like you has allowed us to provide paid gender justice internships to our high school students and college alumni, as well as multi-year scholarships. Over the past decade, our first in the family, foster and formerly unhoused WLP graduates have been admitted to and graduated from the UCs, the CSUs, UCLA’s Geffen Medical School, New York University and many more. Many of our alumni have returned to mentor and train youth in our high school programs, facilitate conferences and workshops, write articles for our WLP blog, participate in the podcast, assist with the development of our community rallies, and develop short films, artwork and street theater.

This work has been possible through paid internships and other coordinator job positions that we've provided with your support.

"The Women’s Leadership Project has been pivotal not only to my educational journey but also to my personal growth. It has educated me on social injustice issues faced by Black women and girls in Los Angeles that are often underrepresented in mainstream media. With this knowledge, I have become more aware of the issues around me and have been actively informing others. This includes those directly affected by these issues and those in positions of power who can address and make change like council members in CD8. WLP and I have marched to a Councilmember’s office, spoken publicly in front of their office about these issues, presented stories of our wrongfully fallen sisters and victims of sexual violence, and proposed demands to reduce these rates. Over the past two years with WLP, I have written articles, spoken on the KPFK Rebel Alliance news channel, participated in rallies, educated, mentored, and engaged in numerous other activities. I am extremely grateful for the education, resources, and support that the Women’s Leadership Project has provided me." Lizette Nsilu, Class of 2023

With your generous donation to WLP:

$50 will go toward culturally relevant books and materials for our workshops and institutes
$100 will go toward scholarship recipient books, room and board assistance
$200 will go toward youth gender-based violence prevention education training for our teens and young adults with an emphasis on intimate partner violence, sexual violence, sex trafficking and LGBTQ+ safe space creation
$500 will go toward two youth internships or the Project Rene suicide prevention education workshop
$1000 will go toward four youth internships or bus transportation, community facilities rentals and mental health practitioner fees
$2000 and up will go toward our Black LGBTQ+ and LGBTQ+ Youth of Color institutes which provide safe spaces, arts education, mental health support, mentoring, and advocacy for queer youth of color throughout L.A. County since 2019

In a political climate where Black women and girls and Black/BIPOC queer youth are imperiled on so many fronts, your support means the world to us. All donations are tax deductible. Thank you in advance for your continued advocacy and for spreading the word about WLP's impact!

The WLP team,

Sikivu, Clay, Brianna, Jessica, Tomorrie, Ashantee and the #S4BG coalition youth and adults

Women's Leadership Project: #Standing4BlackGirls and Queer Youth

Empowering and #Standing4BlackGirls and Queer Youth

Team Members