MORE THAN A PRETTY YOUNG THING

The Black Girl Project has announced the date of their 2nd Annual Sisterhood Summit.

The Black Girl Project Announces the Date for its Second Summit

 

BROOKLYN, NY – SEPTEMBER 26, 2012 — Brooklyn-based non-profit, the Black Girl Project (www.blackgirlproject.org), announced today that the organization will host its second “Sisterhood Summit” on October. Hosted by the BGP founder, Aiesha Turman, the day of workshops and seminars will continue its format as a symposium designed to provide a platform for young women and girls to develop the tools to advocate, express, create and inspire each other. The Sisterhood Summit will also serve as a means to build active and sustainable networks on local, national and global levels. The event will take place on Saturday, October 27 at the State University of New York- Empire State College  Brooklyn Campus.

“This year’s summit was planned based on feedback and the bits of conversation we were able to glean from last year’s attendees,” Aiesha said. “We have a lot in store for both youth and adults — parents, educators and caregivers — and we’re excited that there will be more intergenerational exchanges.”

This year’s symposium is themed: PYT: Pleasure, Youth & Transformation. Inspired by last year’s summit experience, the theme will have participants explore the deeper themes of sex, sexuality, intimacy, love and identity and how these issues resonate in the lives of young women and girls, their communities and popular culture. The purpose of the summit is to give the participants an opportunity to engage in dialogue and interactive workshops that will allow them to question, discuss viewpoints and deepen their awareness and insight. This year, Turman and her team have created a section of the summit dedicated solely to the parents and other adult caretakers in the attendees’ lives. The Black Girl Project firmly believes in the importance of providing a space for a diversity of perspectives to encourage growth as sharing views and ideas lead to enrichment, transformation and understanding.

Interested in attending this year’s Black Girl Project Sisterhood Summit? Online registration is available here:  http://blackgirlproject.wufoo.com/forms/sisterhood-summit-participant-registration/.

 

About The Black Girl Project Sisterhood Summit 2012

BGP’s annual Sisterhood Summit is situated in BGP’s mission to empower young women and girls to navigate the challenging social issues they are faced with around sex, sexuality, and gender by providing a safe environment for them to connect and collaborate with peers, investigate, innovate and explore; in order to educate themselves, educate others, and take action.

About The Black Girl Project

The Black Girl Project is the outreach arm of the film of the same name. The mission of The Black Girl Project is to use the issues discussed in the film–Identity, Obstacles, Goals, Love & Sex, Family and the Media–to help build critical thinking, inspire dialogue and empower young women and girls. For more information, visit us at blackgirlproject.org.

*The Sisterhood Summit is open to all people who identify as Black and women and/or girls and is inclusive of transgender women and girls as well as people who identify with any femininity/femmeness/etc. spectrum.

 

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DEBUNKING THE MYTH

BROOKLYN, NY – JULY 26, 2011 – Super Hussy Media Founder and Filmmaker,  Aiesha Turman, announced today the return of her feature film, The Black Girl Project (www.blackgirlproject.com) to its birthplace, Brooklyn, a welcomed stop on its national tour. The return to Brooklyn heralds the one year anniversary of the film’s debut. To celebrate, Turman has teamed with the Launched Ladies Creative Agency (www.launchedladiescreative.wordpress.com), to screen the documentary as well as lead  a panel discussion of the themes touched on in the film on Wednesday, August 17th at Brooklyn Commons (located at 388 Atlantic Avenue).

“I’m overjoyed about partnering with the Launched Ladies Creative Agency once again, for the screening of the Black Girl Project in Brooklyn,” said Turman. “It is our goal to not just leave this as a completed film, to build a movement to help empower young women and girls.”

The event will begin with a cocktail reception the film’s return to Brooklyn followed by the screening of the hour-long film.  A panel discussion and informal Q&A session focusing on the central themes of the film follows where the audience will get to speak with Aiesha Turman and featured participants from the film.

“Launched Ladies Creative Agency wholeheartedly supports the empowerment of women,” said Kree Cason, co-Founder and co- Creator of LLCA. “The Black Girl Project is an eye-opening powerful vehicle of education and discovery; using Brooklyn as a backdrop we are proud to present the screening and post dialogue of The Black Girl Project along with the filmmaker and director, Aiesha Turman.”

Produced by Turman’s Super Hussy Media (www.superhussy.com), The Black Girl Project (BGP) focuses on one core question: “who are you? “That one question spawned another, then another and yet another, but the one initial question is at the heart of the film.

This film, also the impetus for a non-profit (www.blackgirlproject.org) of the same name, seeks to portray black girls as the complex beings they are. Not just the two sides of the coin we see perpetuated in the media: saint or sinner. It also seeks to spark inter and intra-generational dialogue between black girls and women.  The film screening will also serve as a fundraiser for the Black Girl Project organization. To purchase tickets, visit:

For press inquiries, email Tamara Walker at tamara@nyprdiva.net or visit www.blackgirlproject.com.

 

ABOUT BLACK GIRL PROJECT

The Black Girl Project aims to address the challenges girls face in their daily lives, in addition to helping girls build a strong sense of self, develop healthy relationships and take care of their bodies and minds. Black women and girls are under siege within their own communities and society at large. Not only are they more likely to contract HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), they are at high risk for physical and sexual assault, and death from curable/manageable ailments such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension. In addition, they are more likely to be living at or below the poverty line.

The Black Girl Project addresses the critical worldwide problem of low self-esteem, lack of education, poverty rates and issues specific to black adolescent and pre-adolescent girls regardless of ethnicity. The Black Girl Project is designed to foster positive self-esteem, critical thinking, leadership, academic achievement, community service and entrepreneurial skills among girls, ages 8 to 17, in the United States, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, Europe — wherever there are black girls in need.

This film, also the impetus for a non-profit of the same name, seeks to portray black girls as the complex beings they are. Not just the two sides of the coin we see perpetuated in the media: saint or sinner. It also seeks to spark inter and intra-generational dialogue between black girls and women. For more information about the Black Girl Project, visit: www.blackgirlproject.org.

ABOUT SUPER HUSSY MEDIA

Super Hussy Media is independently owned, written, edited and designed by filmmaker and writer, Aiesha Turman. A strong believer in the empowerment of young women and girls, particularly those of color, Aiesha created Super Hussy as a means to explore black life as it related to the female gender across place, class, time and sexuality. The site focuses on projects that are intensely personal and through them, hopes to shed light on the contradictions, triumphs, perils and beauty that is black womanhood.

Utilizing traditional and emerging media as tools for investigation, Super Hussy Media engages in frank dialogue surrounding the issues of race, class, gender, spirituality and sexual orientation and the roles they play in the lives of black women and girls through the use of women and families, both historic and contemporary. By illuminating the hardships, struggles and complexities of black womanhood, Super Hussy Media seeks to change the paradigm through which black women are viewed and ultimately, how they view themselves.

For more information, visit: www.superhussy.com

 

ABOUT THE LAUNCHED LADIES CRATIVE AGENCY (LLCA)

Launched Ladies Creative Agency is dedicated to providing creative solutions and ideas for entrepreneurs across a diverse spectrum of fields. Founded by Kree and Krystal Cason along with Basyah Prabhu, LLCA fosters strong relationships with its clients, which includes but are not limited to chic boutique owners, independent designers, make-up artists, and stylists. Launched Ladies Creative Agency offers an array of services from marketing, event planning, management and more. The agency provides each client with a personalized package tailored to his or her needs. LLCA was founded on the platform of helping guide emerging entrepreneurs to a mainstream presence and financial success.

For more information, visit www.launchedladiescreative.wordpress.com.

CREDITS

Conceived + Directed By 
Aiesha Turman

Primary Participants
Chanel Jones
Courtney James
Netchem Hairston
Aurelia Spence
Amanda Rivera
Tiffany Coley
Paige Padgett
Melissa Henry

Additional Photography
Nasheim Williams
Netchem Hairston

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PROTECTION IS THE NEW BLACK

 

Eco-Social Conscious Fashion Brand To Host Eye-Opening Discussion on Relationships and Their Impact on the Spread of HIV in Communities of Color

NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 17, 2010 – Verneda White, Founder and Creative Director of Human Intonation (www.humanintonation.com), the premium , unisex apparel brand dedicated to raising awareness and funding for social and human rights issues, announced today that the brand will host its first coed HIV forum to address how the dynamics of today’s male-female relationships are impacting the HIV epidemic among women of color. The event, entitled“Protection is the NEW Black: Sex, Love + Lies in the Age of HIV,” coinciding with World AIDS Day, will take place on Thursday, December 2^nd at the Dwyer Cultural Center in New York City.

“With this forum, I want to breakdown the idea people often carry that HIV/AIDS is someone else’s problem and it will never happen to me,” said White.  “My goal is to have at least one person come out of the forum firmly decided that having unprotected sex is something he or she is no longer willing to do. It is a powerful thing when a person (particularly women) feels empowered to reach that point. There was a time when I was willing to have unprotected sex, putting myself at risk even after my cousin died of AIDS at the age of 22, and now I am no longer willing to do so.”

Human Intonation has been waging a campaign to raise awareness and funding for HIV/AIDS prevention through the brand’s on-going series of “Women 2 Women HIV Roundtable Discussions” where women from all walks of life and organizational leaders were challenged to ask themselves the hard questions like “Why are we [women] having unprotected sex?” and to discuss real life experiences, life lessons, and “ah ha” moments that help to make tangible the idea of empowering women to insist on using protection each and everytime in the fight against the  disease plaguing minority communities. Protection Is The New Black is the first time that Human Intonation will bring in a coed audience.

White, along with national and local partners including the African American Coalition Against AIDS (AACAA), the New York City Department of Health,Lifebeat, Xi Magazine, NAACP, Naked with Socks On, Vera Moore Cosmetics, and One Condoms, have gathered a diverse group of guests and co-moderators to lead the breakout discussion.  The panelists for this event include:

• Dr. Monica Sweeny, Assistant Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene,    Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control
• Professor David Hughes, President, Global World Solutions, Inc. (GWS)
• Hydeia Broadbent, International HIV/AIDS activist and motivational speaker
• Chris Kazi Rolle, Founder of Together Apart, Conversations About Dating, Sex and Relationships
• Slim Jackson, Author of Three Ways to Take it and Single Black Male

Suggested donations from Protection Is the NEW Black will benefit Human Intonation’s non-profit partner, Advocates For Youth (www.advocatesforyouth.org), in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

In addition to the panel discussion, Human Intonation will also host a brief fashion presentation showcasing its latest collection as well as hosting a screening of the short film “Close Call” written by Okema T. Moore and Universal for Laam King Entertainment. A wine reception follows the panel discussion.

For more information about the event and Human Intonation’s Women 2 Women series, contact Verneda Adele White at info@humanintonation.com or 917.379.7917.

ABOUT HUMAN INTONATION

Inspired by Verneda White’s personal family experience during Hurricane Katrina and the loss of her very close cousin James Wesley White, Jr. to AIDS, HUMAN INTONATION^TM is the NEW premium, unisex apparel brand dedicated to raising social awareness while giving 20% of the proceeds from each sale to growing non-profits addressing three of today’s pertinent social & human rights issues. Our original tees, tanks, and dresses support youth & minority HIV/AIDS prevention, volunteer efforts in rebuilding the Gulf Coast, education for children in Darfur, and most recently the citizens of Haiti. Our brand donates to three non-profit partners including Advocates for Youth, Hands On New Orleans, and the Darfur Peace & Development Org respectively. The power in Human Intonation is that we are able to use fashion as a platform for inspiring people to start the conversation about these issues in a way that can change perceptions, change choices, change lives.

For more information, visit www.humanintonation.com.

 

LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX BABY!

Super Hussy Media’s Call for Submissions for “The Talk: Women of Color on Sex”

Brooklyn, NY – April 14, 2010—Brooklyn-based entertainment company, Super Hussy Media (www.superhussy.com), announced today the first call for submissions for their annual publication, the Compendium. The first issue, THE TALK, focuses on self-identified women of Color and how they learned about sex. The deadline for submission is July 1, 2010.

“The Talk,” says Super Hussy founder, Aiesha Turman, “is an exploration of how women of color across the Diaspora learned about sex and what it meant to have a sexual relationship. Ultimately, The Talk is our testimonies on how we were taught or chose to learn about our sexuality and how we are continuing to learn these lessons. “

Super Hussy Media is seeking writers who can share an intimate understanding with readers of not only how they learned about sex, but how that knowledge impacted their sexual exploration. Did you mom sit you down for the big talk? Were your hermanas responsible for giving you the low down? Or was Cinemax After Dark, YouTube or a soap opera your sex ed teacher? Super Hussy is looking for funny, sad, enraging and transformational pieces to share with other women of color to continue the growth, the lessons, introspection and reflection.

For more information about the call to submissions, visit www.superhussy.com or email submissions@superhussy.com.

ABOUT SUPER HUSSY MEDIA

Super Hussy Media is independently owned, written, edited and designed by filmmaker and writer, Aiesha Turman. A strong believer in the empowerment of young women and girls, particularly those of color, Aiesha created Super Hussy as a means to explore black life as it related to the female gender across place, class, time and sexuality. The site focuses on projects that are intensely personal and through them, hopes to shed light on the contradictions, triumphs, perils and beauty that is black womanhood.

Utilizing traditional and emerging media as tools for investigation, Super Hussy Media engages in frank dialogue surrounding the issues of race, class, gender, spirituality and sexual orientation and the roles they play in the lives of black women and girls through the use of women and families, both historic and contemporary. By illuminating the hardships, struggles and complexities of black womanhood, Super Hussy Media seeks to change the paradigm through which black women are viewed and ultimately, how they view themselves.

For more information, visit: www.superhussy.com