‘My Sister’s Keeper’ launching at Spelman

For as long as she can remember issues such as domestic violence, reproductive justice and women’s rights have captured Kadijah Ndoye’s imagination.

Not only has she written about them, the 20-year-old Spelman College junior has long been a student in search of knowledge, always with the hope that one day she’d be able to speak about such sensitive topics in a way that pushes the efforts for health equity for African-American women forward.

Now with the planned launch of My Sister's Keeper at Spelman Tuesday it seems Ndoye's time has come.

“I have been looking for opportunities to bring sister circles, conversations about family planning, and making connections between the on-campus health center and fellow students,” Ndoye said recently. “In addition, this will provide an opportunity to have meaningful conversations with neighboring schools about inclusion, acceptance and respect.”

My Sister's Keeper is the brainchild of Linda Goler Blount, president and CEO of the Black Women's Health Imperative.

The Washington, D.C.-based non-profit is an off-shoot of the National Black Women’s Health Project founded on the Spelman campus in 1983 by Byllye Avery, to advance the idea that African-American women like Ndoye deserved the same opportunity to be healthy as other women.

All these years later, Blount said, the Imperative continues that work with laser focus on access to care, overall wellness and sexual health and reproductive justice to ensure black women can achieve optimum health — physically, emotionally and financially.

Soon after joining the Imperative last February, Blount and her staff sat down to map out a new strategic plan and what they believed should be the organization’s top three priorities.

"While we were having the discussion, there was also great debate about (President Obama's) 'My Brother's Keeper' initiative, and whether or not young, black women should be a focus as well," Blount said.

After the meeting, a member of the staff emailed her.

“Why shouldn’t the Imperative be a leader in being our sister’s keeper, since that is a tenet from which the original Black Women’s Health Project was conceived? Why don’t we call one of our new programs, My Sister’s Keeper?”

So began My Sister’s Keeper.

The goal, Blount said, is two-fold: To empower young women to make healthy choices for themselves and help their sisters build and mobilize an army of advocates who know their reproductive rights and know what needs to be done to protect them. Because financial concerns, unintended pregnancy and intimate partner violence derail more college careers than any other causes, the initiative will also address women who drop out of college.

“These advocates will learn, through My Sister’s Keeper, to use their skills in college and beyond to challenge policies at the local, state and federal levels that restrict their access to reproductive care,” she said. “State and local economies would collapse without our dollars. Our economic engines keep families afloat. So, we must emphasize that Black women are inherently strong, resilient and passionate about our health.”

Blount said that My Sister’s Keeper will work to advance that message and ensure that black women’s health and rights to reproductive autonomy is a priority not just to them but to society and to lawmakers.

A crucial component of My Sister’s Keeper will be the use of wearable personal safety technology and predictive analytics that will enable the Imperative and partner schools to create programs that will empower young women, and help protect them from violence.

“In addition, administration officials will have evidence-based tools and strategies to protect students, help them graduate and reassure parents,” Blount said.

The launch at Spelman will feature a live concert and performance art that will ask young women: Are you your sister’s keeper?

“We will ask young women to help us grow the movement across all historically black college and university campuses, with Spelman leading the way,” Blount said.

By 2020, she wants to establish a chapter of My Sister’s Keeper on every HBCU campus in the country but the initiative won’t be limited to black campuses.

Victoria Phifer, a graduate public health student at Emory University, is the project coordinator for the initiative. She is responsible for recruiting students and empowering them to become advocates.

“It’s critical that young women be engaged because so many decisions involving them are made outside the realm of their control,” Phifer said. “They need to know they have control over decisions made about their bodies and how to access information to make smart decisions about that.”