Please donate generously knowing that the funds will be distributed:
30% to GirlForward | 50% to the artists | 20% to organizing
This fundraiser for the artists and GirlForward is open until July 31st.
♥️ Participate in the circulation of giving and receiving abundance ♥️
Through programs that offer mentorship, education and safe spaces, Girl Forward is a community of support dedicated to creating and enhancing opportunities for girls ages 14-21 in grades 9-12 who have been displaced globally by conflict and persecution as refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers.
Recordings of Offerings
Featured Artists
Padmini Kooverjee
is a retired physical therapist, elder and grandmother originally from South Africa and living in Toronto, Canada. In childhood, she witnessed her dad practicing yoga and was intriqued early on. She worked in physical therapy for 45 years in many different areas of focus and patient demographics.
During the pandemic, Padmini began teaching yoga classes virtually, bringing experience and knowledge to modify exercises for seniors with multiple disabilities and age-related pathologies.
She’s studied Vedanta to understand the universe, life, ethical principles and moral dilemmas, which she incorporates in her teachings.
Lakshmi Nair
is a yoga educator, engaged in reclaiming the pre-patriarchal, non-hierarchical indigenous resilience and resistance of her ancestral tradition of yoga and creating spaces for herself and others to authentically engage with the practices of yoga for self and collective healing and liberation.
In 2014, Lakshmi created a yoga immersion and teacher training program exclusively for BIPOC in the territories of the Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapaho (amongst others) that is commonly known by the colonized name of Denver, Colorado. Since 2014, Satya Yoga Immersion has grown into Satya Yoga Cooperative, a BIPOC owned and operated yoga cooperative.
Ré Phillips
is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist from the ancestral lands of Muscogee communities in the American South.
Her work sits at the intersection of art & social advocacy, and she is committed to using creative expression to address systemic social issues and heal personal dilemmas. Ré is enthused by the material culture, history, and stories of African and African Diasporas globally.
Gigi Mascareñas
is a queer second-generation Filipinx currently residing on the ancestral land of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank peoples (also known as Washington, DC).
As a visual and performance-based storyteller, they love to connect with others through feeling; playing in mediums from painting and design to acting and stand-up comedy. Their art and stories are rooted in mental health, queerness, being born of immigrant parents, and deeper healing. Gigi is currently working on their first children’s book.
Saniah Naim
is a part of the Palestinian Diaspora, currently based between the SWANA region and Turtle Island.
She practices tatreez (traditional Palestinian embroidery) and strengthens her own identity through exploring its history and meaning to Palestinian women. Saniah is a budding herbalist and a fan of all things citrus.
Manisha Pillay
Manisha Pillay is South African, born to a family of human rights activists. She is currently trying to be guided by her children in their home learning space. She dreams about creating, in community, a learning space rooted in Earth, justice and equity. She is a poet and writer, dreaming up children's books which imbues her studies in Geography, her childhood wandering the natural landscape of South Africa with her mother and her value of ancestral cultural practices.
iara bloomz
is a queer latinx-american singer/songwriter, writer, earth fairy, and crypto-student. Currently, she's crafting her debut album and nft's about being in conversation with your shadows.
Chetna Mehta
is a granddaughter of Indian and South African diasporas. Her greatest muses lately have been the planet, the energy of ease, queerness, body wisdom, honesty, grief, spiders, and freedom.
Chetna continues her learnings in present-mindedness, compassion, authentic expression, freeing creativity, culturally-aware and strengths-based therapeutic approaches, growing and gardening, and ancient wisdom from her lineages and mitochondrial dna.