It has been over a week since I had the honour of being on a panel of leading ladies at an Inspirational YOU event. I was going to write about it last week but I had to spend some time thinking about the day, the panel discussions and the follow up from the event.
The most recent beingU blog is about the black community having many g
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roups that aim to do good and the fragmentation there is.
The Inspirational YOU event was the second event over a few days where the organisers showed us that what motivated them was their children. Foluke from the Precious Awards was quite clear about what motivated her – her two beautiful daughters! If anyone has listened to me at all over any period of time you will know I do not shut up about the fact that it is all about my daughter and have no future plans to stop. It really struck me how many of us, black women were putting their necks out to do something to show their daughters (at the moment that is all I have to go with) they can be so much more.
Combined with watching ‘The Help’. This brought up feelings that I had when I read the book. We have come a long way from bringing our daughter up to be exactly like us, we want so much more. There is a fight still out there in what our children see and how they think about themselves but I have always been of the school of thought that what I have had absolute control over is my child’s self esteem and values. For me, I cannot spend valuable time worrying about things out of my control so I put my all into what I can.
I mention this as one of the topics that sort of took over the Leading Men’s panel at the Inspirational You event, was about what our children (mostly sons) see in the media and how they perceive themselves.
For me this is why we have the Sonia Meggie’s of this world, she started Inspirational YOU, taking a stance and saying there is a lot of greatness within our community and I am going to just go out there and show people.
So For me Saturday 29th October, I was humbled to be on a list with Kehinde Olarinmoye, Charlene White, Diana Hilson, Helen Jennings, Yolande Letshou, and Christelle Kedi to be able to play a small part in what Sonia was is trying to achieve within our community.
Thing is though we want to see more stories of boys being put forward by their mums and dads as the inspiration for setting groups like this up. At the moment I am only hearing it for the girls, which should not stop but we need to hear that boys are the motivation as well!
If you have any stories where boys have inspired their parents form an organisation or a business, please let us know
In the meantime I would urge anyone reading this to take a look at Inspirational YOU and Precious Online (who graced my company beingU with two awards recently!) and see what they are about.