Sierra Marling
Dayzaughn Graves and Ty’Shalia Woods came together through their collective experiences as Black single moms at the Eastern Scholar House to create the “Ain’t I a Girl” program, which highlights the collective experiences of other women for Madison County girls.
They hope that showcasing these experiences will allow girls to gain exposure to ideas and perspectives as well as to affirm themselves and their own identities.
Graves received her bachelor’s in women and gender studies from Berea College in 2019 and is currently studying for her master’s in public administration.
Woods, originally from Illinois, moved to Kentucky to study for her bachelor’s in public health at the University of Kentucky. She said that while the transition form Illinois to the Kentucky was challenging, but it also resulted in growth.
“When I moved to Kentucky from Illinois, I still didn’t have the resources that I felt could have better prepared me to succeed here. So, I felt that need for other women,” she said.”When I was in the Scholar House, me and Dayzaughn together, we’re just like, ‘there are no resources here. We have to create our own, we have to create our own opportunities.’”
Graves expressed that her relationship with Woods gave her insight into intersectionality and the complexity of female relationships. Both women recognized the different parts of their lives that cross and mingle with each others’ to form a cohesive relationship.
“We would just talk about what our experiences were because our kids would just play. Like, I have a six-year-old, and she has an almost six-year-old — they would just naturally play. So, we just naturally started talking, and then we started talking about how we had a lot of shared experiences, even though I’m a country girl, and she’s a city girl. It was wild how intersectionality really affected us in the same way, through our academic careers, through trying to pursue jobs, through public health, or just our health experiences,” Graves said.
“We actually met at the Eastern Scholar House,” Woods explained. “Both of us are single moms — and we were both in school — so we met at the Scholar House, and we basically just became friends. Then, over time, we saw a need for the community and were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this thing.’”
From there, the two women applied for the Kentucky Foundation for Women (KFW) Art Meets Activism Grant and were awarded $4,520 to pursue their idea: Ain’t I a Woman.
The co-founders explained that the name of the program was inspired by both bell hooks and Sojourner Truth, who utilized the phrase in their activist work.
“Whenever Sojourner Truth said, ‘Ain’t I a woman?’ she was talking about the lived experiences of Black women and their inability to vote. With the politics at the time, there was conversations of allowing white women to vote, but there was a specific restriction for Black women…And so, bell later philosophized a very similar aspect of it,” Graves explained.
According to their website, the goals of the program are to “expose participants to tools that can increase self-worth, identity, and relational connections”; “to gain/increase knowledge of lived experiences of womanhood in different stages of development among participants”; and “foster a creative and judgment-free learning environment that encourages authentic expressions of self.”
“The program is basically an empowerment program designed to uplift empower, and help participants express themselves,” Graves said. “We are a middle school, high school, and college-age intergenerational program, and we hope that exposing people to different generations, as well as different walks of life, will help make us all well-rounded human beings altogether.”
Graves said the program also incorporates activities such as podcasting, crafting, and holistic living experiences to introduce participants to things they may not necessarily be exposed to.
Some of that exposure comes from programming known as girl chats, where participants can hear from, and speak to, invited guests and each other about topics about womanhood and life. They may also complete crafts and have workshops, with lunch included, for about four hours of program time for participants in a single day.
“The idea is that oftentimes women — especially with older women — they will have children and then there’s like an intergenerational communication lapse between parents and their children, so what we decided to do was, make a no-stress classroom where all ages are involved. We just come as ourselves and have conversations — we have girl chats,” said Graves.
Woods added, “Currently it’s just a group of women and girls getting together to dive into some of the conversations that are not had in households, you know, that people should probably have with their kids, or with their mothers. We kind of sit and discuss ways to improve and develop our communication, and other strengths and barriers that we all might have. We look at all the different aspects of what it means to become a woman and be a woman.”
The program meets three to four times a month with in-person events in both Richmond and Berea. Most events are also streamed on Zoom.
The pair welcome all women and nonbinary individuals who want to connect with their ideas and share their experiences.
To join or ask questions, they can be reached at info.aintiagirl@gmail.com.
Currently, they are also preparing for their first conference, which is taking a call for proposals online at: https://www.aintiagirl.org/empower-her-conference. Both women also welcome anyone to contact them with partnership or resource-sharing opportunities for the organization.