#RaiseYuhVoiceJamaica #RiseInSolidarity #RiseResistUnite #1BillionRising
THE FACTS:
Today, complicit rape culture permeates all of our lives, dehumanizing one in three women. Globally, up to 50 percent of sexual assaults are committed against girls under the age of 16, and even more of these accounts are targeted towards black girls.
"Black women are less likely to be protected by police when they are being murdered, beaten, and/or abused by their partners and community members."
"Black women survivors of violence—and particularly poor, lesbian, gender-nonconforming, and transgender Black women—find that police responses to violence all too often result in further, and sometimes deadly, violence against them."
Our response:
We hear you
We see you
We believe you
We are here for you!
Solidarity Farms is the home-base of Raise Yuh Voice Jamaica!
Invest in a one-of-a-kind BIPOC LGBTQ+ Community that centers Healing Justice and Climate Resilience through Food Forest Restoration and more!
As we GROW this uprising and ground our roots in Jamaica, we are also creating alliances in the broader Caribbean region because we recognize we grow stronger and grow further together.
Are you an accomplice? An organization seeking to collaborate with us?
Do you have access to funding? Are you a community member needing our support? Are you someone who wants to help us build our systems form the ground up, on the farm, in the administration?
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We are seeking various layers of support: building, construction, capacity building, infrastructure, start up funding; supporters, investors, visionaries, luminaries, and practitioners who care about climate and gender and racial justice inequities and pandemic we are living through.
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We are transforming lives and entire communities by anchoring bravery, safety, security, and impactful initiatives and trainings for individuals and communities to choose new life tools and new direction.
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Collaborating and advocating on behalf of BIPOC LGBTQIX women and non-binary gender fluid kindreds and their families is critical for us to augment sustained regenerative emotional, economic, spiritual, and environmental solutions for ourselves, our communities and our futures.
We are reshaping our way forward through:
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Wellness-Healing Resilience: Yoga, Hiking, Mind/Body Strengthening, Thai Chi, Qigong, Meditation; Massage and Somatic Healing Practices
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Emotional Resilience: Consent Practices for A New Way Forward; Life Skill Training in self-reflection, empathic listening, solution driven collaborative problem solving, and leadership development
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Climate Resilience: Gardening and Permaculture; Holistic Nutrition Education and Demonstration
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Economic Resilience: Community Outreach and Advocacy pilots/partnerships
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Earth-Based Spiritual Resilience: Indigenous Taino and Maroon History & Wisdom Practices; The Drumming Arts (song, dance, culture, spirituality)
ABOUT RAISE YUH VOICE
and
SOLIDARITY FARMS JAMAICA
Raise Yuh Voice: In Solidarity for a Violence Free World started off in 2016 as a project of Spirit Drumz, founded and directed by Afia Walking Tree, since 1990. Our Raise Yuh Voice initiative was meant to bridge the gap from silence to empowerment for the outrageous number of women and girls whose voices are silenced. With violence against women/girls/trans figures in the Caribbean surging, and little attention on our emotional wellness, we have been filling the dire need for emotional development tools in the hands of our most vulnerable community members, enfranchising them as activists armed with emotional self-resilience.
Since 2016, we have been immersed in extensive research and assessment, through hands-on retreats, workshops, and community visitations, on the status of women and girls in Jamaica. When we took a deeper examination of violence in all its forms, with sexual and physical violence, we also examined systemic violence in economic, political, socio-cultural, environmental and ideological spheres. Research by the UN Jamaica, shows that the rate of gender based violence in Jamaica is 3.5 times higher the global average of 1 in 5 women. And girls between the ages of 10 - 19 years of age are the most vulnerable. Here is a Gender Violence 101 video recently released by one of our parnter organizations WeChange Jamaica explains the intricacies and complexities of Jamaica's gender violence problem.
We are committed to grow and strengthen our country’s coalition amongst already existing survivor organizations such as: WeChange Jamaica, Tambourine Army, OBR Jamaica, UN Women Jamaica, Institute of Jamaica, Women Inc., Jamaica Pride, and the University of the West Indies, to name a few.
On February 18, 2017, Raise Yuh Voice was birthed out of a kinship with One Billion Rising and Bay Area Rising that began 2014 in Oakland, California. The goal of the rising was to bring voice through the power of the healing expressive arts and the drum as a central tool of radical empowerment. Each of our risings began with a march and drumming in the streets by women and girls. Today, we are moving forward with Raise Yuh Voice Jamaica (#RaiseYuhVoiceJamaica) as an integral project of Spirit Drumz, an arts empowerment organization founded and directed by Afia Walking Tree, since 1990.
It has always been in the vision of our founder to access land so that we could have a secure space to truly bring our embodied practices to light. That said, after looking for two years, in October 2021, we found our land. Our communities of over 90 donors, across the world pooled funds and we were able to purchase the land that will become our hub of operations and first site for resilience building. The land in the hills of Jamaica, is a sanctuary, an organic food forest, and we call it Solidarity Farms Jamaica. We are now armed with our earth-based focus which will boltster more deeply what we have been growing since we began.
