Our {Her}story |
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The Butterfly Movement was birthed from the cross-pollination of Brandi Mack & Niambi Jaha-Echols. In 2006 these two souls crossed paths in Oakland California where Brandi was volunteering for a Black Women's Holistic Health conference while Niambi was facilitating a workshop on her work with African American girls. This work actualized into a book written & self published by Niambi entitled: “Project Butterfly: Supporting Young Women and Girls of African Descent through the Transitions of Life”. The book supports and encourages young women and girls through the changes and challenges of life using the life cycle of a butterfly as a wonderful model of transition.
Also at this time Brandi was working in the California central valley, with Delta Healthcare and their teen pregnancy clinic, looking for tools to support the youth and her two daughters. Both of these women noticed how their life’s work was intertwined and chose to stay in contact.
The rest was {Her}story.
Also at this time Brandi was working in the California central valley, with Delta Healthcare and their teen pregnancy clinic, looking for tools to support the youth and her two daughters. Both of these women noticed how their life’s work was intertwined and chose to stay in contact.
The rest was {Her}story.
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From 2007 to 2014 Brandi attended Camp Butterfly in Chicago and acted as a “Mama” or camp counselor to hundreds of Black girls and women. The Project Butterfly curriculum was used as a guide for Camp Butterfly, an overnight camp for Black women and girls designed to empower and encourage them to increase their self esteem, positive cultural and feminine identity, to dream and set goals, increase their sense of community, while preparing them to advocate change.
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Back on the west coast Brandi continued her career in trauma informed youth development, she was given an assignment working with Black girls and women to design green spaces in urban and rural areas. She quickly recognized that the Project Butterfly curriculum was the training guide to support in the incubation and transformation of personal and land based practices. It is through our collaboration, training and experiential workshops with Niambi and Project Butterfly that the Butterfly Movement was birthed.
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Since their inception, Camp Butterfly and Project Butterfly have served thousands of girls from across the country. Women have joined us as volunteers from Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, California, Michigan, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Georgia, Wisconsin, Belize, Jamaica and Ghana West Africa. Women have also volunteered with our organization who are first generation from the following countries: Haiti, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. It is our goal as the Butterfly Movement to uphold our community of global Butterflies and to transform the world one girl at a time.
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